Thursday, April 18
Today, we left Tokyo to drive to Hakone, home of Hakone National Park. Hakone is located in the Kanagawa prefecture, which is similar to a US state. There are 47 prefectures in Japan, including the city of Tokyo. The capital of Kanagawa is Yokohama, which is the second largest city in Japan with 3.5 million people. Osaka is third largest with 2.5 million, and Nagoya (home to Toyota) is fourth with 2.0 million. The summit of Mt. Fuji, known as the "shy mountain," is not part of any prefecture, but belongs to a Shinto shrine. There are also four major islands in Japan: Honshu, the main island; Hokkaido, whose capital is Sapporo; Kyushu; and Shikoku.
Before boarding the bus we had a question for Mimi. We asked her to draw us the symbols that represent the name of Japan. The top symbol is “sun” and below that is a symbol that means “origin of." Thus, Japan is the origin of the sun, also known in the west as land of the rising sun.
On the bus ride to Hakone, Mimi provided instruction on the Japanese language, in addition to the information above. Japan has three types of written characters: Kanji, which are the Chinese characters, and Hiragana and Katakana, which are phonetic characters. The phonetic based character language was invented by the Japanese, because it was thought that the Chinese characters, of which there are 50,000, was too hard to learn. Hiragana has 48 characters. Katakana is used for foreign words. Traditional Japanese is written top to bottom and right to left. Modern writing, however, is western style. In a Japanese newspaper, articles written in pink are to be read traditionally, and those written in blue are written western style. By the way, the Japanese word for Japan is Nihon (or Nippon when used commercially). The name Japan came from the Chinese, who told Marco Polo about the island(s) and called them Jee-Pon. The name was taken back to Europe and it stuck.
Mimi taught us the symbols for mountain, river, tree, and big. Japanese sentences use characters from all three types of characters. Chinese characters are needed for when the phonetic word has multiple meanings. For example, hashi means three things: edge, bridge, and chopsticks. So Chinese characters are needed for the sentence: “I run off the edge of the bridge carrying chopsticks.” Mimi also made cards for each of us with our names written in Japanese characters.
On the bus, we were all pleased to see Mt. Fuji. Mimi told us that she has many tour groups that never see it (hence "shy mountain"), especially in the summer when the snow has melted and the humidity is thick. Mt. Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan at 12,835 feet. It last erupted over 300 years ago. In July and August 30,000 people climb it. It is popular to climb in the summer. The climb starts at the fifth station. It is especially popular to climb up and see the sun rise from the top. Fuji is a prominent feature because it is isolated and a perfect cone shape. The name Fujisan means wealthy ("fu") samurai ("ji") mountain ("san," not the same word as the honorific). Hama is a word that also means mountain. Note that the word "Ji" also means temple. We also asked Mimi to write the characters for Fujisan. She also demonstrated how to make an origami Mt. Fuji and presented each of us with an example. We had the pleasure of seeing Mt. Fuji on our bus ride.
The bus began to climb into the mountain area, and we noticed the cherry trees growing wild on the mountainsides. We reached our destination, a town called Hakonemachi on the shore of Lake Ashi, which means “Reeds Lake.” Ashi does not freeze in the winter. Here we had an opportunity to visit some tourist shops, one of which featured beautiful wooden magic boxes (puzzles, most popular is the ten step) and other wooden items. We bought a box and beautiful small wall hanging and a little animal — really lovely and unique. We then boarded a boat (must be Japanese design, but looks like a pirate ship) for a thirty minute cruise across Lake Ashi. It was very nice. We were in first class and had ample room to stroll on the top deck.
At the end of the cruise, we rode a ropeway (cable car) to the top. The ropeway had an amusing sign at the bottom (note what the dog is saying!).
At the top was a place called Owakudani, which wasn’t all that interesting to be honest. It really just offered a view of volcano steam vents with a strong sulfur smell. The specialty there is black eggs, which Mimi described to us and were sold in a five pack — none of the group partook. The bus then took us to lunch.
Lunch was at a fabulous restaurant called Itoh by Nobu (yes, that Nobu). We had several courses, which started with onion and tomato soup. Then Spanish mackerel with a sweet paprika sauce (yum), wagyu beef, pasta with pesto — the style of cooking was teppanyaki (like American restaurant Benihana).
Then we visited the Hakone Open Air Museum, which is really an outdoor sculpture garden with a small art collection indoors. The sculptures were really great, a lot of Henry Moore, plus Dubuffet, Fernand Leger, and Joan Miro, and many others (120 sculptures in total). The landscaping was really nice and since it was on a hillside, there were nice views of the mountains. There were many cherry trees growing wild, apparently on the mountainside. Unfortunately, the weather had turned a little overcast. This museum was established in 1969 and has a collection of 300+ pieces of Picasso, primarily ceramics and drawings from his daughter Maya. Everyone really enjoyed this.
We then arrived at our hotel in Hakone called Gora Hadan, a traditional Japanese inn. This place was very old school Japan with no shoes in the rooms, tatami mats, and shoji moveable screens. Our room opened up to a small Japanese garden with an outdoor heated stone tub for soaking, which Roy did, very nice. The inn, which has been visited by imperial guests in the past, also had a public bath area, which requires total nudity, with separate facilities for mean and women (which get switched, apparently at 3:00 AM). We had from about 4:30 PM until 7:00 PM that we could have used this facility, but we passed. It also turned out that only two rooms of our group had the outdoor tub, so we were lucky.
For dinner we changed into our yakata outfit with kimono jacket and tabi socks (underwear underneath, please) for dinner. Dinner was haute cuisine and souvenir menus were distributed. There were nine courses with all sorts of fish, beef, vegetables, and soup. Everything was creatively presented. The meal ended with rice, miso soup, and pickles, which seems to be the tradition in Japanese meals. A printed menu was presented to us, and, thanks to Shirley, we also received one printed in Japanese.
We also got a great group photograph, which the hotel printed and framed for us before the end of dinner. Everyone had entirely too much food (lunch had been big also), and we retired to our rooms at about 9:00 PM to sleep on the floor.
Before boarding the bus we had a question for Mimi. We asked her to draw us the symbols that represent the name of Japan. The top symbol is “sun” and below that is a symbol that means “origin of." Thus, Japan is the origin of the sun, also known in the west as land of the rising sun.
日本
On the bus ride to Hakone, Mimi provided instruction on the Japanese language, in addition to the information above. Japan has three types of written characters: Kanji, which are the Chinese characters, and Hiragana and Katakana, which are phonetic characters. The phonetic based character language was invented by the Japanese, because it was thought that the Chinese characters, of which there are 50,000, was too hard to learn. Hiragana has 48 characters. Katakana is used for foreign words. Traditional Japanese is written top to bottom and right to left. Modern writing, however, is western style. In a Japanese newspaper, articles written in pink are to be read traditionally, and those written in blue are written western style. By the way, the Japanese word for Japan is Nihon (or Nippon when used commercially). The name Japan came from the Chinese, who told Marco Polo about the island(s) and called them Jee-Pon. The name was taken back to Europe and it stuck.
Mimi taught us the symbols for mountain, river, tree, and big. Japanese sentences use characters from all three types of characters. Chinese characters are needed for when the phonetic word has multiple meanings. For example, hashi means three things: edge, bridge, and chopsticks. So Chinese characters are needed for the sentence: “I run off the edge of the bridge carrying chopsticks.” Mimi also made cards for each of us with our names written in Japanese characters.
On the bus, we were all pleased to see Mt. Fuji. Mimi told us that she has many tour groups that never see it (hence "shy mountain"), especially in the summer when the snow has melted and the humidity is thick. Mt. Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan at 12,835 feet. It last erupted over 300 years ago. In July and August 30,000 people climb it. It is popular to climb in the summer. The climb starts at the fifth station. It is especially popular to climb up and see the sun rise from the top. Fuji is a prominent feature because it is isolated and a perfect cone shape. The name Fujisan means wealthy ("fu") samurai ("ji") mountain ("san," not the same word as the honorific). Hama is a word that also means mountain. Note that the word "Ji" also means temple. We also asked Mimi to write the characters for Fujisan. She also demonstrated how to make an origami Mt. Fuji and presented each of us with an example. We had the pleasure of seeing Mt. Fuji on our bus ride.
The bus began to climb into the mountain area, and we noticed the cherry trees growing wild on the mountainsides. We reached our destination, a town called Hakonemachi on the shore of Lake Ashi, which means “Reeds Lake.” Ashi does not freeze in the winter. Here we had an opportunity to visit some tourist shops, one of which featured beautiful wooden magic boxes (puzzles, most popular is the ten step) and other wooden items. We bought a box and beautiful small wall hanging and a little animal — really lovely and unique. We then boarded a boat (must be Japanese design, but looks like a pirate ship) for a thirty minute cruise across Lake Ashi. It was very nice. We were in first class and had ample room to stroll on the top deck.
At the end of the cruise, we rode a ropeway (cable car) to the top. The ropeway had an amusing sign at the bottom (note what the dog is saying!).
At the top was a place called Owakudani, which wasn’t all that interesting to be honest. It really just offered a view of volcano steam vents with a strong sulfur smell. The specialty there is black eggs, which Mimi described to us and were sold in a five pack — none of the group partook. The bus then took us to lunch.
Lunch was at a fabulous restaurant called Itoh by Nobu (yes, that Nobu). We had several courses, which started with onion and tomato soup. Then Spanish mackerel with a sweet paprika sauce (yum), wagyu beef, pasta with pesto — the style of cooking was teppanyaki (like American restaurant Benihana).
Then we visited the Hakone Open Air Museum, which is really an outdoor sculpture garden with a small art collection indoors. The sculptures were really great, a lot of Henry Moore, plus Dubuffet, Fernand Leger, and Joan Miro, and many others (120 sculptures in total). The landscaping was really nice and since it was on a hillside, there were nice views of the mountains. There were many cherry trees growing wild, apparently on the mountainside. Unfortunately, the weather had turned a little overcast. This museum was established in 1969 and has a collection of 300+ pieces of Picasso, primarily ceramics and drawings from his daughter Maya. Everyone really enjoyed this.
We then arrived at our hotel in Hakone called Gora Hadan, a traditional Japanese inn. This place was very old school Japan with no shoes in the rooms, tatami mats, and shoji moveable screens. Our room opened up to a small Japanese garden with an outdoor heated stone tub for soaking, which Roy did, very nice. The inn, which has been visited by imperial guests in the past, also had a public bath area, which requires total nudity, with separate facilities for mean and women (which get switched, apparently at 3:00 AM). We had from about 4:30 PM until 7:00 PM that we could have used this facility, but we passed. It also turned out that only two rooms of our group had the outdoor tub, so we were lucky.
For dinner we changed into our yakata outfit with kimono jacket and tabi socks (underwear underneath, please) for dinner. Dinner was haute cuisine and souvenir menus were distributed. There were nine courses with all sorts of fish, beef, vegetables, and soup. Everything was creatively presented. The meal ended with rice, miso soup, and pickles, which seems to be the tradition in Japanese meals. A printed menu was presented to us, and, thanks to Shirley, we also received one printed in Japanese.
We also got a great group photograph, which the hotel printed and framed for us before the end of dinner. Everyone had entirely too much food (lunch had been big also), and we retired to our rooms at about 9:00 PM to sleep on the floor.
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