Day 4: Hakone

Fact: A Japanese everyman is kinder than a caucasian business man. When a train is packed and people are standing, the buisness man still needs a seat for his most honored bag (o-kaban-san). Jackass.

My next stop, Hakone, showed me just how badly Tokyo had spoiled me. Luckily, I am blessed with many obaasans (Japanese grandmothers) here. After a train ride to Odawara, against my misgivings, I tried to take the bus to my hotel. Mind you, I haven't taken a bus in years and forgot to signal to the driver my stop. When the lady beside me realized it, she looked at me with such horror. "Kami no Tounosawa!?" she asked, referring to my stop. I spent the next few minutes standing in the aisle of the bus as it took hairpin turns through the mountain roads and got off at the next stop. From there I was golden and arrived at my hotel, a traditional style Japanese inn.

I knew that the Ichinoyu Honkan had public baths, what I didn't realize was that those baths were how one gets clean at these things. I am lucky in that I'd been to a Korean Spa in the DC area about a year ago and once you get the first shock over with and realize that being naked with other strange women is no big thing (really, no one cares) you just go for it. Still, I'd thought that the whole experience was optional, like a hot tub, but my room had neither a toilet nor a private bath.

What it did have was tatami mats, rice papered doors, a futon and a bubbling stream just outside the window. Tatami mats have their own unique smell that took some getting used to. It was somewhat sweet, somewhat grassy and soft beneath my bare feet. I'd taken my shoes off at the inn's entrance and exchanged them for slippers (and exchange those slippers for others when using the bathroom). Keeping track of what shoes I was supposed to wear when took some getting used to.

With some time before dinner, I struck out trying to find the local train station and ride the cable car. The Hakone area, as I've learned is a region of small communities dotted through the Japanese Alps. There is no such thing as a flat road and so the train station was up a mountain and along a series of pathways. For a girl from Maryland's flat Eastern Shore (the highest point is 87 feet above sea level), this took some getting used to and my calves still haven't forgiven me. With my luck, I took the wrong turn and ended up by a botanical garden. Once again, a local helped me out. "Watashi wa doko desu ka?" (Where am I?) has become my phrase of choice and the elderly couple to whom I had asked it were kind enough to offer me a lift in their car to another station. An example of gender relations, the man stumbled through a few words first, his wife waiting patiently before breaking into perfect English with an offer of a ride. Did I just hitchhike?

After a brief ride on the railway, it was back to the inn. Aside from the shoes, however, the biggest change was the food. With both breakfast and dinner provided, I was treated to some real authentic Japanese cuisine. I don't even know half of what I ate but I tried mostly everything. They put so much food in front of me at each meal I felt bad that I couldn't finish it all. It was all so fresh and tasty. At one point, I picked up a morsel with my chopsticks, trying to identify it only to see clusters of suckers. Octopus? Squid? I don't know but I still ate it.

This post is getting rather long so I'll end it here with a final word on Futons. Not so bad, but then again I could have slept on a bed of nails and called it heaven I was so tired.

Up next: My day in Hakone