Hakone and Yokohama

Wednesday, May 13, 2009
I last wrote on Sunday. The last two days, we have been on our own because our dorms in Tokyo were closed for some reason, so we had to find other accommodations.

Jeff and I decided to take this opportunity to go see something that D. Choi was not going to take us to: Mt. Fuji. Way back when we were staying at the Higashiyama Sanjo Hotel in Kyoto, I met a couple from Australia who had told me about the city of Hakone, near Lake Ashi. They told me about this amazing trip that they had just gone on and about the “Hakone Free Pass” for $40. They also gave me a brochure, from which we essentially planned our trip.

We got to Hakone, after issues based on the fact that we had no idea what the name of our hotel was, let alone how to get there, at about 1:30. We checked into our hotel called the Senkei Hotel, and relaxed for a while. Then we went out to explore and bought the Hakone Free Passes at the train station and rode up to Gora to try to see some museums. By that time it was almost 4, so everything was pretty much closed by the time we got there. We went back to the hotel and I took a bath in my first outdoor public bath. Luckily for me, I was the only one there and it was exceptionally nice. Like socially acceptable skinny dipping in a fountain. The view from the bath was nice and just the setting itself, on top of a hill, looking out from the warmth of a bath set in the middle of nature was really incredible.

We woke up early, hoping to go see as much as we could. The first stop was a water fall near our hotel called Tamadare Falls. Unfortunately, it was closed until the 18th due to construction. We were sad, but had too much to see anyways. We headed out to Lake Ashi to do the whole tour and make the most of the $40 we had paid.

At the lake, we walked through the Ancient Cedar Avenue, which was really pretty…beautiful old trees lining a dirt path. At the end of the path, we accidentally headed into the Hakone Detached Palace in Onshi-Hakone Park, which is actually where we wanted to be anyways. There were huge groups of students on a tour there, and we made a few friends because they were excited to speak English to us. The Palace grounds were supposed to have views of Mt. Fuji, but Tuesday was pretty overcast. We could see the mountain, but our cameras were having trouble picking it up. We went up to the observatory point, and tried to get some shots there too…hopefully it will come out better with a little help from Photoshop.

The next stop was the dock at Hakone Machi, to get on a boat to cross the lake and get views of Mt. Fuji from there. The boat turned out to be a pirate ship, and Jeff was like a kid in a candy store, he was practically giddy…it was cute. On the boat, the weather got pretty windy and brought in some more clouds…it felt like we were inside a cloud by the time we got into the dock on the other side of the lake at Togendai. The area itself was very pretty too and I’m glad we went, but it was a little disappointing not to get a good picture of Mt. Fuji.

At Togendai, we took a ropeway up the mountain, which was also supposed to have a view of Fuji. But by this time, there was no hope of us seeing it. We then took a cable car back to Gora Station, so by the end of the day we had pretty much taken every possible means of transportation.

It was after two by this time and there were still a couple places we wanted to see before we had to head to Yokohama and our capsule hotel. We got on a bus and headed to the Hakone Venetian Glass Museum which was about 20 minutes away. The museum was pretty cool and some of the stuff was very pretty, but we pretty much ran through it in order to get back to the bus stop in time to catch the next bus back. We left the museum at around 3.

Back at the Gora Station, we took a train to the Hakone Open Air Museum. The entrance fee was $14, so Jeff didn’t want to go in and we had to catch the last train before 5. So that being the case, I literally ran through the outdoor exhibits. Some of them were really interesting. One was called “Sfera con Stera” by Arnaldo Pomodoro. It was a golden sphere that had parts cut out of it…creating the notion of a landscape or a cityscape in parts. It was very interesting, just placed on the grass as part of a composition of other sculptures. Another interesting and architectural sculpture was the “Curved Space” exhibit by Peter Pearce. This was a bubble structure, creating interesting spaces inside and around the white bubbles.

At about 4:30, because Jeff was waiting, I left the museum so we could head to Yokohama. Figuring out how to get there was another challenge, but we managed it and got into the city at around 8 pm, after train rides and transfers and finding wireless internet so we could find directions. It took us a little while to find our hotel, probably because it was in the basement of a bigger, nicer hotel. It was like a subsection of the Breezebay Hotel in Yokohama. It was called the Sakuragicho Capsule Resort and was actually a lot nicer than I was expecting.

Capsule hotels are very interesting because they really make use of the idea of public space. Your only private space is inside your capsule, which literally consists of a bed. The bath, your locker, shower and toilets are all public and shared. I’m getting pretty used to the whole public bath idea, since this is like the third time I’ve done it. Tuesday night, Jeff and I went out to Mos Burger (really good Japanese burger place) and then went to figure out the internet situation at our hotel so we could do a little work on our project. We ended up at an internet café next door to our hotel, and again, it was surprisingly cool. I wish we had internet café’s like that in the states. You request the number of hours and the type of booth you want (Jeff and I got a private booth for two people) and then you get all the free drinks you want. There are also shower facilities, games, movies all included in the hourly rate. You can also buy food and towels…anything you might really need. Essentially, you could live in an internet café if you needed to.

Jeff and I rented a booth for 2 hours; plenty of time to get a little work done and check our email. Then we headed back to the hotel just to drop off our backpacks. By that time, it was after 11, but we had yet to explore Yokohama, so we went out and wandered a little. We walked towards the bay, where there was a Ferris wheel and a small theme park, along with a shopping mall and some interesting high rises. We saw a couple buildings that are being done for the 150 anniversary of Yokohama Port, but it was dark and I spent quite a bit of time finding out that my camera sucks for night shots.

We wandered around until about 12:30, then we headed back. I went to sleep at about 1 and woke up at 9. We had to check out at 10 and I had to rush to take a shower. We got out in time and then went back to the internet café and watched some movies. I got about 2/3 of the way through The Da Vinci Code before our time was up…I’ll have to finish it later.

After that, we headed to the train station to get back to Tokyo to meet with Don at 2 at the National Youth Center. We presented our sketches and talked about what we plan on doing, but we need to start producing on the computer so we can have presentations, which everyone else had. Our situation over the past couple days made that a little difficult, but we’ll just have to get on it. After we presented, I got to IM with Andrew a little bit, which was nice. I’m starting to miss him a lot, but I’m pretty sure my last month here is going to go by pretty quickly so I need to make the most of it. Finally, at 5, we checked back into our dorms and figured out the internet situation. Tomorrow, we have class at 10 and Jeff and I need to go back to the site to get better measurements, a better feel for the area and do an analysis of a nearby building.

That’s all for now. I’ll post pictures and write more about our project soon.