Hakone > Tokyo > Kitakami
A nudge in the ribs summoned me back into the world of consciousness around 5:10 the following morning. ‘Er Indoors was quite keen for the two of us to make an early morning visit to the onsen, but a quick check revealed the bathing facilities were closed for maintenance purposes from 5:30 to 6:00 so we spent the next few minutes discussing the various Fuji-viewing options available.
Our train to the Deep North was due to leave Tokyo at three-something in the afternoon, and our only other commitment was a lunchtime appointment with The Interpreter, so that effectively gave us the whole morning to mount an attempt to glimpse the mountain.
Eventually we decided that a repeat of the previous day’s train > cable > ropeway epic was preferable to a bus trip to Moto-Hakone, which would be likely to prove fruitless if there was cloud about. At least, if the weather improved, even if we didn’t get to see Fuji we’d be able to see the scenic views we’d been unable to enjoy yesterday.
Since we could possibly save some time if we caught the train from the nearby station at Tonosawa that gave me an excuse, once I’d returned from the onsen, to go for a walk in an attempt to locate the station, which we knew had to be located higher up on the slope on the other side of the stream.
Given the fact that there were two suspension bridges across the stream, one on either side of the hotel, I guessed that one or both must lead to the station, and that it should be possible to more or less complete a circuit, crossing one bridge on the way to the station, and crossing the other one on the return journey.
I planned to try to confirm my hunches by inquiring at Reception on the way, but the area was deserted when I passed through, so I was left to trust my own instincts.
Which, of course, turned out to be totally wrong.
I turned left once I’d left the hotel, figuring to do an anticlockwise traverse around the imagined loop, crossed the stream by the downstream bridge and encountered what seemed to be a private residence with no obvious path up the slope towards the station.
And, if the casual reader is wondering how come Hughesy was so certain that there was a station there, yesterday’s train had stopped at a station clearly labelled Tonosawa and I’d managed to catch a glimpse of a train from my stream-gazing position in the room the previous evening.
Fine, I thought. It has to be the other bridge. Should have gone that way from the start since I saw those cars going across yesterday afternoon.
Heading back to the upstream bridge which was, in any case, the more substantial of the two, involved passing the hotel. I checked Reception on the way past in the hope of gaining guidance, but the area still seemed deserted, so I carried on over the bridge and followed the road from there.
The road took me to another small hotel, and there seemed to be a path that looped around behind the buildings, so I followed that. Various side tracks branched off the main path but I figured that the route to the station would be fairly well-trodden, so I followed what looked like the best option, which gradually became less and less promising. In fact, the further I went, the more it seemed that no one apart from the odd adventurous foreigner used the track at all.
Backtracking, I tried the various paths that branched off my main track but each of those seemed to lead to a section of pipe that I assumed was associated with the spa business.
Back at the hotel, I found Reception attended and received instructions that I should turn left once I’d passed through the front door and left again at a group of vending machines.
Arriving at the downstream bridge there was no sign of vending machines, so I followed the road further downhill, crossed the bridge that took the main road over the stream, found the vending machines, which were situated close to a sign bearing the words “Tonosawa station’ and an arrow.
Fine, I thought. Shouldn’t be too far.
Unfortunately after a couple of hundred metres, I was faced with a multitude of paths with signs in Japanese (which were, of course, unintelligible to large hairy non-Japanese-speaking foreigners).
Had I received the same set of directions when I first started out I might have been inclined to explore a little further, but the thought of breakfast prompted me to head back to the hotel, where we decided to catch the bus back to the terminus and catch the train from there instead.
Breakfast was quite substantial - a croissant, juice, and a plate with scrambled eggs, sausages, a hash brown salad and a serve of pasta with mayonnaise, as well as the predictable tea or coffee.
Once we’d finished eating, packing and checking out we headed back to the bus stop and caught the bus to Hakone-Yumoto, where we missed the train by a matter of seconds.
Never mind, we thought, the next one goes at 9:03 and the weather seems to be improving all the time and we should be up at the cable railway before ten.
The train ride was a little disappointing after the previous day’s misty mystery though I guess that if we were experiencing it for the first time the reaction would have been different.
Once we were on the rope-way, however, we started to realise that the Fuji-viewing prospects were virtually nil, though we were able to get a good view of the sulphurous hell of Owakudani on the way.
Reaching yesterday’s lunch stop we headed off in the general direction in which, as far as we could make out, Mount Fuji must lie. Since all we could see was a massive bank of white cloud, Madam ventured into a souvenir shop to verify that we were heading in the right direction.
She was informed that we were in the right place for a good view of the mountain but not today.
In that case, there was nothing for it but to head back down the rope-way and cable car, catch the train to a spot where we could link up with a bus that would take us to the hotel, reclaim the luggage and take a taxi back to the station, where a local train would deliver us to Odawara and non-reserved seats on the 12:35 service to Tokyo.
As we headed away from Hakone I reflected that over the years our very good friend Triple-F (Frockster, Former-Fishmongrel) had frequently suggested that, should we ever decide to visit the Land of the Rising Sun, it was imperative that we plant a Bowen mango tree on top of Mount Fuji.
As ‘Er Indoors scanned the scenery on our left, these words came back to haunt me in the wake of an unsuccessful day-and-a-half’s attempted Fuji-viewing.
It was obvious these sacrilegious sentiments had come to the attention of the deities that guard the mountain, prompting them to veil the sacred symbol in cloud for the duration of our visit.
As the train left the Hakone region we looked back. The cloud was slowly lifting. It seemed that the deities had been mollified, though from where we sat on the shinkansen the summit remained shrouded by cloud.
So I turned my thoughts to the prospects for the next stage of the odyssey rather than dwelling on the pitfalls of the past.
As we headed towards Yokohama and Tokyo we moved into a belt of urban development, though as we pulled in to Shin-Yokohama I was surprised by the amount of greenery close to the station.
It was hardly surprising to find, once we’d left the station, it was impossible to tell where Yokohama ended and Tokyo started, and it was just after one o’clock when the train pulled into Tokyo station and we set off in search of The Interpreter.
The Mother’s Mobile made that task much easier than it could have been, though once contact had been made and visual contact established I found myself on the wrong side of a stream of students on a school excursion as ‘Er Indoors threatened to turn a corner and disappear from view.
With disaster narrowly averted, we set off to find a lunch venue, eventually settling for pizza before spending about an hour discussing various language-related matters and wordplay in general.
I’d been mildly bemused by the Don’t Touch Doubtful Things signs we’d sighted around Hakone and had amused myself by trying to figure out exactly which of an object’s properties would render it doubtful. Discussion of similar issues with someone whose job involves instantaneous translation of spoken English into spoken Japanese and vice versa was an interesting way to pass the time, particularly when we touched on the matter of a cake shop I’d seen references to on the internet.
It was called, believe it or not, Pumpkin Poo.
By 3:40 we were back on the bullet train bound for BashÅ country. A lengthy tunnel took us to Ueno station, where I made my first sighting of the new double-decker shinkansen before we plunged into a tunnel, emerging over the sprawl of Tokyo’s northern suburbs. We’d hardly gone any distance before two overalled females moved through the carriage collecting rubbish, something I found odd since we’d been kept waiting on the platform while the train was cleaned before departure.
Or do travellers bring their rubbish on board with them?
After we’d passed Omiya, a name that seemed familiar from my music collecting activities we encountered farmland once again, though there was still plenty of medium-density housing as well.
And in the middle of one urbanised belt, sighting a Hotel Valentine I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of establishment it might be (particularly after our lunchtime conversation).
There’s every possibility that the establishment in question could attract the majority of its business from the honeymoon trade. Of course, there are a number of other possible explanations, or the name could originate from somewhere right over on the other side of the further reaches of left field.
The blinds on the western side of the train had been drawn to keep out the afternoon sun, and I was glad to have something to look at as we passed patches of forest interspersed with urban areas.
About ten minutes past Utsomiya we were finally in more or less open country stretching away to the eastern horizon as we gradually moved into serious forest in between villages and farm lands. We passed through many lengthy tunnels as the land became hillier and banks of dull grey cloud started to develop overhead.
Glancing across, someone on the port side of the carriage had raised their sunshade and I caught sight of the snow-capped mountains of the central range. The mountains away to the east must have been considerably lower, or under the influence of warmer conditions near the coast since there was no snow to be seen in that direction.
We also noticed that we were moving back into areas of cherry-blossom, and on the edge of Sendai I caught sight of one of the few freight trains I’d spotted since I’d first boarded a train in Japan, showing how clearly the commuter lines are separated from the corridors that carry the vast quantities of freight that an economy the size of Japan’s must generate.
We arrived in Kitakami, our base for the next thirty-six hours or so, comfortably after dark and immediately settled into the routine of booking the next leg of the trip, which took some time since Sunday’s travel involves two changes of train on the long haul back to base in Kobe. An additional complication reared its ugly head as ‘Er Indoors requested a starboard-side window seat on the final leg, a final despairing attempt to catch a glimpse of Mount Fuji in the wake of Triple-F’s fantasising. Unfortunately the only available reserved seats were in the smoking section of the train, so we decided to cut our losses and declined.
While these negotiations were in train someone who I guessed was our host for the next day and a half arrived, mobile in hand and obviously looking for someone. Having established that she was, in fact looking for us we all waited till negotiations had been concluded and the tickets processed before greetings had been exchanged and then headed off for my first encounter with a modern Japanese house.
Apart from a couple of visits to The Mother’s apartment, which is some forty years old, we’d only seen the external aspect of the Japanese house.
We arrived outside a small two-storey house occupying a small block and guarded by a small hairy dachshund named Kotaro.
Once inside the canine was transformed from watchdog to lapdog, attempting to protect the property by a vain attempt to lick all and sundry to death, prompting the new nickname of Grog Dog for a creature that is obviously a major league Licker.
With the preliminary pleasantries out of the way, we sat down to supper, talking till ten while seated on atami matting as a small brown dog embarked a strategy of subjugation by dissolution.