The alarm didn't get set, so we slept in a bit, which worked out nicely. Had another buffet breakfast and walked around the hotel's gardens a bit, which were lovely. There are some photos posted.Took the shuttle bus to the train station, shopped for shoes for Erica (no results though), got some snacks and got on the shinkansen. Was in Odawara in about 2 hours. From Odawara, hopped a bus to Miyanoshita, where the ryoken (traditional Japanese inn) was. Took the cable car down. It's located at the bottom of a valley along a river. It's all pretty Japanese olde-skool and stuff. Staff was great; enthusiastic, with just enough English for us to mostly get by. Erica continues to whup ass w/ her linguistic skills, which is great.
Took a public (segregated) bath before dinner. Was familar w/ Japanese bathing protocols due to stays at the Miyako Hotel in SF, which has traditional Japanese baths (w/ instructions!).
There are lots of different types of footwear and a lot of rules surrounding when each can be worn. It's quite amusing.
Each room is assigned a maid for the duration of your stay. More like a butler kind of thing than the "clean up all your stuff" type of thing. She kept laughing, not sure if it was at us or what. She also seemed to think that Erica was cute. Had an awesome (seemingly never-ending) trad Japanese dinner. There were some suspicious pickles that Erica had to spit, but other than that, it was great. Also, we chose the "fresh" sake over the hot sake. It was tasty and I was a bit toasty. Dinner took an hour and a half, with many introductions of new dishes. For each dish, the maid would place my portion in front of me and tell me what it was, then place Erica's in front of her and tell her what it was, even though it was the same thing.
Reserved a co-ed private "family time" outdoors bath. We were led out of the building across the river to a private bathing pavilion w/ 2 pools. One "very" hot up high and the other just "hot" lower by the river. It was awesome.
Here's the link to our photos of Hakone.
2 comments:
Reading about how the maid repeated the whole explanation of each food item reminds me of various experiences in China -- where there's no shortage of strange interactions with the locals which often left me confused as well as amused!
Post a Comment