Backpacking

Day 18: 17th February Straight out of The Goonies...

Hakone, Japan

Today we took a day trip out of Tokyo to the Hakone region, just North of Mt. Fuji. Not that we had any chance of seeing it today at all - Hakone was caked in a heavy mist. To me this reinforced how lucky I was to see Fuji-san so clearly on the second day.

Hakone is a notorious tourist trap - and the most entertaining one I'd been to. I think the people I was with made it. We all had a lot of fun and acted like a bunch of big kids.

The first stage of the tourist conveyor belt was a steep train ride up the central mountain. The area is a dormant volcano, with an outer rim, a lake inside, and a mountain at the centre. At the top the rock was yellow from the sulphur and we walked through clouds of toxic, egg-smelling sulphate gases belched from the rock. A prime time to dispense of any excess wind if there ever was one. There were also hot bubbling volcanic springs - it really did look like another planet (apart from the ever-present vending machines. Japan has about 5 millions of them, and you are rarely more than 5 minutes walk away from salvation through coke,

chocolate or beer. I expect there's even one on the top of Mt. Fuji).

The enterprising novelty on the summit was boiling eggs in the volcanic pits, leaving them scorched black (and very tasty with a bit of salt). Tucking into eggs alongside us were a bunch of Koreans ("Engrand? BECKHAM! OWEN!").

We then took a cable car down the mountain to the lake. The view were, in a word, misty, but when we descended below the mist we could see the lake spanning out across to the outer rim of the volcano. Various attempts at waving at people in passing ascending cars yielded success near the bottom, with a car chocka with tourists beaming and waving madly at us.

For the final leg, we were shepherded onto... get this... a replica pirate ship(!) for a journey across a mist-shrouded lake. We actually caught a glimpse of the ship on the lake as we were descending in the cable car, and it was a surreal sight. As Dan remarked, it looked like something straight out of The Goonies!

The ship was great fun, and brought out the salty Bristolian sea dog in all of us. There were full-size ceramic models of pirates and everything. After a while on the bow as "Kings of the World", the bitter cold wind and drizzle got