I'm ashamed to say it, but this blog entry is the first one of the entire trip which was not written at night before I went to bed. I'm actually writing this on the afternoon of the 18th, because last night I had the makings of a killer headache, and couldn't face an hour or so in front of a computer. We bid farewell to Yokohama, our home now for the past 8 days or so, and boarded the 8:50am Shinkansen bound for Nagoya. We had a feeling it was going to be a crowd...

As we set off in the morning, we had already accepted the fact that today was going to be a very similar day to today, if not worse, weather wise. It was already raining as we boarded the Shinkansen bound for Odawara. We changed trains at Hakone Yamoto, and we met a woman from Vancouver, Helen, and a young Japanese woman (I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten her name). Helen hosted the girl on an exchange in Vancouver, and was over in Japan for a few weeks for a vis...

Today we had a huge day in the picturesque town of Hakone. I have read that it is very beautiful. The ropeway that we went on, which is the 2nd longest ropeway in the world, apparently gives breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains, and spectacular views of Mount Fuji. Then the Lake Ashi cruise which we went on apparently gives fabulous views of the surrounding mountains from inside the volcano crater in which the lake is situated. I say "apparently" becau...

The decision we had to make this morning was whether we were going to make the trek to Hakone, or whether we were just going to have another exploration day. We had a look at the different activities in Hakone, and we decided that 2 days would probably be enough to cover what we want to do there, so we chose to have another quiet day. There is apparently museums and nature walks all around Hakone which could easily take up a few days by themselves, but I'm pretty...

No offense to the great city of Kawasaki, but we didn't want to have to come here. Had Yokohama had a room for us at short notice, we would have stayed there. But, as it turns out, the room we are staying in was the last Twin room available in any Tokoyo Inn in the Kanagawa prefecture (which covers quite a large area). We packed our bags this morning, and since we will be returning there tomorrow night, the hotel at Yokohama kindly allowed us to leave our main ba...