At the end of my second Hakone update I mentioned that I’d like to post some of the best photos I took of the artwork from 彫刻の森. (choukoku no mori – the forest of sculptures) Well I did some digging around and it looks like it’s OK to post them. I read a few legal things but they were very boring, but mostly I just found thousands of other blogs that have posted their photos. So I figure, hey, it’s free advertising for the park.

Still, I don’t want to go overboard. If you want to see how utterly mind blowing the place is (and it is pretty head exploding) you need to go. Ideally on a clear day after it’s snowed, but that’s pretty hard to predict since Japan’s weather is currently in ‘Mike’s trying to go outside! What do we have left? RAIN SOME SCORPIONS!‘ mode. Yeah, that’s a real phenomenon.

Anyway, click the photos to see the caption I spent over 15 seconds writing for your benefit! YOU INGRATES.

As you can see, it was pretty amazing. I hope this has convinced you to visit 彫刻の森 if you’re ever anywhere near Hakone! I hope this has also assured you that I do very rarely post things I promise to, even if it does take me nearly a month!

Remember a few weeks ago, I posted about my trip to Disneyland? It seems that Japan’s weather gods or pixies or evil underground scientists or whoever really have it in for me because, despite being almost April, it snowed on our second day in Hakone, and when I say snowed, I mean it really came down. We had planned to head over in the cable car again like we did on our first day but when we saw the chaos, we had a rethink.

Things are going to get confusing time wise here so I’ll explain. Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff. Well, time in Hakone works the same way. (100 points to anyone who gets this reference). We stayed in Hakone for three days in total. The first day was misty as heck (I wrote about it here) The second day was also pretty cloudy, and was the blizzard day. On the final day the snow had settled and made Hakone super beautiful. But let’s deal with day two first.

Day Two

In the end to get away from the snow we headed to the town of Odawara, which is pretty close to Hakone. There we first milled about the station and drank coffee number 5,182 and 5,183 of the trip. After that, we headed to Odawara Castle, which as you can imagine, looks amazing. At least it does when it’s not throwing snow at you on a dark, cold March morning.

I wasn’t allowed to take any photos inside, but as with quite a few of Japan’s castles (including Nagoya castle) the inside has been converted into a museum, which lets you check out the lives, religion and warfare of the people of the area from long ago. You can also get out onto one of the top parapets (is that the right word?) of the castle and check out the surrounding area, but it was cold as heck so we stayed out there for like 10 seconds.

Infact it was so cold we quickly made our way back to our hotel and stayed in the onsen for about 6 hours, with just one hour to eat. I practically dissolved.

Day Three

Waking up and looking out the window, I did not see the next logical step in the weather’s attempt to kill me (fire rain). Instead we were greeted by a really beautiful sight – Hakone covered in snow, under a beautiful blue sky. The whole place was awesome.

So we had a great idea. “Let’s go to the top of the mountain in the cable car! There will be nobody else there! Those cowards are scared of snow!” Turns out those cowards actually really like snow as the queue to get onto the cable car was about 3 hours. We were pretty disheartened, and were preparing to give up and go sulk in the onsen (again). But on the way back down I got chatting with the Japanese lady sitting next to me on the train, and she recommended the Hakone Sculpture Open Air Museum to us. I’m so glad she did.

We got there and the price to get in was about 2,500 for the both of us. That seemed pretty steep, but we took a chance. Turns out there are about 250 statues, four museums and a huge set of beautifully kept gardens up for offer. We went to a Picasso exhibition, a Henry Moore exhibition and loads of other things. The snow just enhanced the whole experience.

I wanted to upload the photos I took (I took about 150 of the park!) but I’m not sure if that’s OK or not. So here’s my super artsy photo of the Picasso building instead. Some of you may have noticed that the picture archive is currently dead. Once that comes up I may upload the photos into there – it really depends if it’s OK or not. (I assume it is, since everyone was uploading photos).

[19 Apr 2010] I totally posted them here!

I am now going to lay down some cold hard facts;

• The Hakone open air museum is the best museum I’ve ever been to.
• Snow is awesome and should be invited to all museums.
• Spending a total of 10+ hours in an onsen over three days does not seem to have any adverse effects
  (I’ll try to test this out in the future)

As you can see, we totally headed back to the onsen for the night before coming back to snowless Tokyo, thus ending our trip to Hakone, and also ending this blog post about it. I’m going to do some sleuthing regarding uploading photos of statues and so on. If it’s kosher, I may do another post with a handful of photos from the park. If you do get to Hakone, go to the park!

Wow. What an adventure, and an amazing way to kick off being 22. I took a huge amount of photos over the last few days (300+) so this is the first part in a probably two or three update series on my trip to Hakone. Today’s will be the most wordy. Unfortunately, a huge amount of mist decided to come with us on our journey. As a result, these photos don’t really tell you much. So guessing can be half the fun! (Read: I’m a bad photographer who has no clue how to deal with mist).

We stayed at a really fun cheap Ryokan with an onsen (hot spring) called Kappa Tengoku, which was great because it was really close to the station, cheap, and the dinner was ‘here is a mountain of food and a really hot metal tray. Go wild!’ Once we’d dumped our stuff in our rooms we fought the urge to just head straight into the onsen, and instead headed out on our epic four hour journey.

From the town we stayed in you can do a large loop of the area that takes you up the mountain on a train, then across the peaks in cable cars, then around a lake in a boat. Finally, you come back to the start by bus. It was amazing, despite the mist.

You see the smoke coming off the mountain below the cable car? That’s actually sulfur. The entire mountain looks like it’s burning from the inside. When you’re inside it it’s really amazing – you can’t see very far and the whole place reeks of eggs.

Speaking of eggs, the Hakone special of black eggs (which are eggs left in the pools of boiling hot sulfur) were being made just as we came past, netting me this pretty cool photo;

We didn’t stick around to try them out though. Instead we opted to make our way down the other side of the mountain in a cable car, escaping the egg smell and cold. Or at least we escaped the cold until we got on the boat and made our way across the lake that hugs the side of the mountain range. From the boat it’s possible to see a giant red temple gate set into the sea, but unfortunately we were too far away and it was too dull to make it out. But at least the boat stood out!

After the boat trip, which we spent mostly hiding inside from the cold like tiny babies, we hopped on the bus back around to the town. We then spent the next 6 or so hours frying in the hot spring, before eating and drinking far too much, and then burning it off in the onsen. We were all asleep by about 11. (Again, tiny babies). It was a great day despite the weather, and it just made us more hungry to get out and see everything once it cleared up. Of course, we weren’t at all prepared for what was coming…

Well, it’s late on Tuesday night. I’m back in my dormitory just having had my first day at university in 2010. Because we’re technically still in the first semester (of which we have around three weeks remaining), we’re covering exactly the same material as we were before. Not fun!

I realised I didn’t post anything about Nagano after New Years’, which is odd considering that’s the main reason I went, but the decision to leave my laptop charger at home was a deciding factor in my blog output. So apologies for that. I was very kindly given a CD as I left which contained more photos, so I will now recap on some of the things I got up to before coming back here, breaking up the cold, hard text with even colder pictures (because they’re full of snow).

On the big day itself, we waited until about 11:30, then headed out by foot through the snow to the shrine near Mako’s house. When we got there we joined a huge queue and waited to pray and buy good luck charms for 2010. I chose the one designed to help people pass exams. I assume it works 100% of the time and am therefore taking thirty seven masters degree exams this year.

After that it was sleep time, but then on New Year’s Day, we headed into the city of Nagano and checked out the big shrine. More praying. Lots more people. Awesome food. Oh, and even more snow!

Yes, I don’t know if there was snow where you guys were but we had plenty on New Year’s Day. What makes this extra fun is that they had none in Tokyo! Hah!

In the evening it was time for the event I’d been simultaneously anticipating and dreading. New Year’s dinner with the extended family. I have to say, just meeting Mako’s family on the first night was pretty nerve wracking, but it looked like my generous use of polite Japanese was sufficient. (At least I think it was, I have no idea if they now plan to besmirch my good reputation due to my rudeness. I hope not.) I remember walking into a room and watching nine or so faces drop about three foot. You see, in a hilarious twist the visitors had not been told about me. Needless to say they assumed the British were invading. Which we were. We had come to eat their delicious New Year’s food! (By ‘we’, I mean ‘I’. I get all the food.)

Can you spot me in that photo? I’ll give you a clue – I’m the girl on the right. The meal was delicious and everyone was really kind. I couldn’t shake a feeling that I was sort of gatecrashing the meal in the day or two leading up to it, but they all seemed genuinely pleased to have me join them. It was a really heartwarming feeling.

After the meal, Mako’s mother and her nieces (I think, everyone introduced themselves really quickly and I got confused. I think I remember someone being a robot or something) played us some songs on the piano and violin, which was a great way to end a memorable evening.

On my last full day in Nagano, we finally went off to do something I’d been dying to – go to an onsen! I’m pretty sure the last time I went to a hot spring was the one in the hotel in Nikko, in September 2008. That’s fifteen months! The view looked over the little town and the surrounding mountains, everything covered in snow. It was lovely. Sadly, you can’t take a camera into an onsen (for obvious nudity related reasons) so instead here is the view from my bedroom window taken on the last full day I had. It’s so beautiful, it makes me sad when I look around my dingy dungeon room.

So that’s it for my coverage of my lovely week in Nagano. Thanks obviously to Mako and his family for putting up with my confusing British traditions and poor grasp of how showers work. I was going to write my 2010 resolutions at the end of this post but it ended up being so long I won’t! I guess I will just have no resolutions this year! ANARCHY!

I put the photos I was given in a special folder in the gallery.

I thought I’d go for an ‘arty’ title with this one. Today at around lunch time, snow came to Nagano in a big way. If you didn’t see it, take a look at my post from yesterday, because these pictures honestly look like they came from a different season.

As usual I will put my favourites up here and write captions, the rest are in the photo archive.

This is the view from my window. It sure beats the skyscrapers and roads I usually see. The snow came really fast – I remember looking out the window and there being no snow, then I took this photo about ten minutes later. Since I didn’t get a white Christmas this year (or much of a Christmas at all. Santa doesn’t work in Asia, apparently) a white New Year’s was extra nice.

This is the line that runs through the area. The trains only come once an hour, so they’re not quite as handy as the ones in Tokyo, but at least people here can actually hear themselves think rather than just get told to stand behind the yellow line the whole time.

This is Kaizujyou (Matsushirojyou) castle. Inside is a really wide and open courtyard. It was quite a surprise really that there was no building inside, but it added to the ‘wide’ feeling of Nagano. I like the feeling of being able to swing my arms without hitting three people, eight buildings and then getting arrested.

Ducks of the moat around Kaizujyou castle. They were too busy swimming around to pose for any photos, though.

So yeah! Snow! Awesome! Also tonight I’ll be sitting down with Mako’s family to eat traditional Japanese New Year’s food. Everyone keeps telling me it’s ‘unique’, I choose to understand that to be a good thing.

Anyway, thanks for reading! As I mentioned all the photos are in the photo archive.