Guest house living room

Across Owakudani

Down the cable car

Owakudani delta

Hot springs in the rain

Owakudani

Owakudani visitor's center

Owakudani

Looking up towards the cloud layer

Life prolonging eggs at Owakudani

Owakudani visitors centre

A garish pirate ship on Lake Ashi

Inside a museum in Hakone

Rain outside the museum

Mist in the cedars

Torii on the Tokaido trail

Cemetery on the Tokaido trail

N.B. This was written shortly after I returned and will be rewritten as and when I get time.

We all headed up the maintain on a cable car to the source of the onsen today, the sulphurous springs in the Owakudani valley. The cable car had rain drops on the windows however which meant photo-taking was futile apart from a few shots.

The springs themselves come out piping out, so we got to sample one of the “Black eggs” which are cooked in the sulphurous waters. Once you get past the black shell however, it’s basically just a boiled egg, but one purported to give you 7 years of extra life.

Heading back down the valley we grabbed a gaudy pirate ship across the lake when it promptly starting pissing it down with rain.

With a walk around the forest now treacherous to say the least, we headed into a local museum which resembled someone taking stuff out of their garage and putting it on display. A really random collection of things like clocks, cameras, cabinets and samurai armour.

With the rain now mist, we headed down the cedar lined alley of what used to be the old Tokkaido trail between Kyoto and Edo (Tokyo).

I also managed to snap a picture of a tori-gate in the mist which turned out to be one of my favourite photos.

After wandering about lower Hakone for the afternoon everyone headed back for a relaxing evening at the guest house and making use of the onsen.

Places visited:

• Hakone
• Owakudani
• Lake Ashi
• Random Museum in Hakone
• Cedar lined alley (Tokaido trail)