We left the house quite early to take the train to Hakone. The ride was about 2 hours and we slept all the way.

We reached the Hakone station close to lunch time so we headed to a soba house to try the aforementioned famed dish. The weather was already freaking cold because it was a mountainous region so I opted for hot soba. Dennis and Javin opted for cold soba “because it’s nice!” The freaks. I was quite impressed with the arty deco of the place. It’s simple and it looks nice. Subtle but yet radical. I can’t seem to find the correct vocabulary when I want to describe the “Jap” feeling.

We walked around the area a bit and ran across this bridge with sakura trees flanking it. I was quite excited because it was our first sighting of sakura in Hakone, so I took more pics.

We found our way to the hotel to check in and rest for a while. Javin couldn’t wait and had a cosplay session.


The view from our hotel room.

Went for some sight seeing after we put down our things but we didn’t stray too far from the hotel.

But we still got caught in the rain! We were running from cover to cover when the rain got lighter.

Dinner was excellent! It was the kind of set meal they usually serve you during a tour but this one was much more well done. So many flavours to try. I was at a lost as to what to eat. The variety was overwhelming.

The highlight was the day was the onsen, or hot springs, which we went for after dinner. I’d been looking forward to it ever since we were at the planning stage of the trip! Well, it was much hotter than I remembered! But we lasted a shorter time than we expected because it was quite buay tahan to go inside for too long. Well obviously I don’t have pictures to show for this one. And what do you want to see anyway?!?


Javin and I decided to go try on the robes.

Some time into the night it started snowing heavily. Javin couldn’t resist himself and got dressed to go down. His enthusiasm spread quickly to the others and before I knew it, we were having a snow fight downstairs! It was cold, but damn fun as we started stuffing snow down each others’ necks. I’m not the revenge seeking type so I just stood there to watch as they chased each other around like children. Haha. It was damn fun, especially for Dennis as he’d never seen snow before.

After everything settled down we went back to our room to play cards and drink beer. As usual, I konked out first so I went to sleep. Halfway through my sleep I heard the window being opened. I think Dennis was doing a forfeit because he lost. They made him strip and stand in front of the open window! Must have been damn cold. Haha.