16.-17.02.2018 HAKONE/ODAWARA

We stayed in Tokyo for the night after Kamakura and subsequently took the train to Hakone. There we visited the hot spring (Onsen) resort Yunessun – they had a Coffee bath, a Sake bath, a Green Tea bath, a Wine bath and a few chocolate whirlpools, as well as a 40m long open air bath with three levels, with an amazing view of the Hakone mountains. Outside, there were even three water slides operated with warm water going over a big rock containing an additional cave-like hot spring. It was definitely the most relaxing day imaginable.

We stayed at a hostel in Odawara that day, as the next bigger train station is located there. We dropped our bags at the hostel (which was extremly hard to find) and went into Odawara city center to eat. We didn’t have to search for too long until we found something tiny but really really nice. Inside, we were greeted by the waiter, who helped us figure out how to use the machine used for ordering food and drinks, as we never had to do it before and all the buttons were labelled in Japanese. That way, we just had to point at the picture and he told us what to press. We then sat down with a direct view of the kitchen in the middle of the room and had time to watch them preparing our meals. The whole staff was in their twenties and visibly enjoying working that day. Together with the Japanese hard rock they played from one of their phones, a great atmosphere prevailed the room. The food tasted great as well, all things considered it was by far the best dinner experience until now.

The hostel and our roommates in Odawara were really nice as well, however, I couldn’t sleep very well because of a proper orchestra consisting of at least 5 people snoring their brains out.

We took the morning rather slowly and slept in, before packing up and visiting Odawara Castle with all of our belongings buckled on. Because of that, we only went up the hill to the Castle and not up inside the Castle as well, there was too little space and too little reward for the effort of carrying it all up.

BGC: 15 (+0)