Ashinoko Lake

Ashinoko Lake

1

Hakone Tozan

I fancied being away from a city, plus I saw a picture in a guide book of a pirate ship, so we went to Hakone Tozan. The guide book listed all sorts of activities, like hot springs and cable cars and temples (Japan has lots and lots of temples) but all I wanted was a little countryside with a view of Mount Fuji…and maybe a pirate ship. (If I’m honest, I might not have mentioned the pirate bit to Husband.)
Now, although I mainly married my husband because he makes me laugh, an added bonus is that he is exceptionally good at planning trips. So by the time I woke up the following day, he had sorted a rather complicated series of steps, ending at Lake Ashi in Hakone.
We got a train into Tokyo, then the shinkansen (a bullet train) to Odawar. There we were able to buy a two-day pass to the Hakone area. We took the local tourist train (Hakone Tozan Railway) to Hakone Yumoto. Here, we caught a bus, which went up the mountain, to Lake Ashi, also known as Ashinoko Lake. It’s a crater lake, formed on the side of Mount Hakone.
Lake Ashi was exactly what I’d hoped. As we arrived, the sun was shining, and there, in the distance, was Mount Fuji. It kept clouding over, and an iphone is not necessarily the best camera for taking views, but if you look very carefully, you can see it. In real life, it was very clear, and very exciting. The lake has ferries, which take you to various tourist spots, and one is designed to look like a pirate ship. I could tell Husband was impressed. (Actually, if I’m honest, his only comment was to wonder how they managed to get full-sized ferries onto a mountain lake. Did they build them on site, or were they helicoptered in?)


The whole area is a well known tourist spot, so there were lots of facilities (and luckily for us, not too many tourists). We bought lunch in a 7-Eleven (which is, interestingly, a Japanese owned chain) and ate next to the lake. Then we walked to a view point, across a bridge where you could see koi, up two hundred steps through a woodland hill. There were birds calling, the weather was warm and humid, the air felt green and peaceful. It was all pretty perfect.
We considered hiring a rowing boat or peddle boat, taking the ferry across to a temple, or going to see the hot springs. But really, to simply sit in the sun and listen to the water lapping and the birds singing, was all we wanted. That and a bin for the rubbish – Husband was strangely fixated on finding a dustbin.
We then caught the bus back to Hakone Yumoto. We bought tickets for the Romance Train, which was a slower and cheaper way to get to Shinjuku, where we could go on the JR line to the hotel. A ‘Romance Train’ is not, by the way, romantic. Kissing in public is considered indecent in Japan, and we saw very few people even holding hands.
Fabulous day out.
xxx
Thank you for reading.
Why not sign up to follow my blog?
anneethompson.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mary’s Story

Image
Mary’s Story Mary’s Story by Anne E Thompson “I travelled to Bethlehem in a small cart. Every bump (and there were many) was agony. As I was jolted along, I was racked with pain. The baby’s time was near, you see and the pain was almost unbearable. Later, they would sing songs about a cute donkey carrying me. Nice thought! I don’t think there’s any way you could’ve got me on a donkey. As each contraction cramped every muscle in my torso, I huddled up like an animal, and prayed for it to be over. I could see Joseph, watching me as he walked alongside. He really didn’t have the first idea what to do. Oh, how I wanted my mother. I yearned for her to be there, holding my hand, telling me everything was alright and would be over soon. When we arrived at Joseph’s uncle’s house, the women folk came and helped me inside. The room was crowded. All Joseph’s male relatives from miles around had come to the house, for shelter and food. The women were busy cooking supper and the m...
Read more

Was St. Paul a Psychopath?

Image
Was St. Paul a Psychopath? When I was researching JOANNA, I discovered what it meant to be a psychopath. Born with an under-developed frontal lobe in the brain, a psychopath was destined to live their lives unable to experience emotional empathy, unable to feel guilt, unable to love. I listened for many hours to psychopaths talking, I read copious studies by neuroscientists, and I even managed to find two mothers of psychopaths who were prepared to talk to me. By the time I came to write JOANNA, I knew how a psychopath would think and behave, and I could imagine what it would be like to live with one. However, the whole time I was writing JOANNA, striving to make an interesting story that would also show the reader everything I had learnt, I had a nagging doubt. If someone was born a psychopath, were they doomed? What did the disorder mean from a spiritual point of view? Psychopathy is a mental disorder, not an illness. It cannot be cured. It is a genetic condition, it cannot ...
Read more

Mary's Story continues

Image
Mary’s Story continues “… After eight days, Joseph came and circumcised the baby. We were in the main part of the house by then, and when Joseph appeared with the sharpened knife, I knew what he was going to do. How the baby wailed! It felt cruel, though I knew it was the right thing to do, even in this strange place we must obey the Jewish laws. We also formally gave him the name Yeshua, the name we had been told to give him by the angel, all those months ago.  I wondered if Joseph minded, people would know it wasn’t a family name. (I also had no one called Yeshua in my own family, though I did know a boy from my childhood with the name.) After forty days, we had to travel to Jerusalem, to pay for redemption at the temple. As Joseph was from the tribe of Judah, we had to pay five shekels of silver. We couldn’t afford a lamb, so bought two pigeons to sacrifice. It was nice to leave Bethlehem and to have some exercise at last, to see people and to take my baby into the world. ...
Read more