I met Trisna at Shinjuku station at 7:00 am. Another American was supposed to meet us, too, but alas the process of meeting up at the busiest train station in the world is easier said than done. Trisna and I bought 5-day JR Rail passes which allows you to use any of the JR lines as much as you want for 5 days (doesn’t have to be consecutive). It set me back quite a bit, but I think it will be a good investment in the future with trips and things.

The itinerary was never really clear to me at any point. We wanted to see the Mt. Fuji lake district, and there was talks about going to Hakone, a city famous for sightseeing. Trisna did all the research ahead of time, and I was quite content with just following around. For my first trip out of Tokyo, I wasn’t going to be too picky.

From Shinjuku station, we took a JR Line toward Fujiyoshida. We had to transfer to another train about 3/4ths of the way there, and it turned out that it was actually a private railway. Despite the fact that all the signs said “JR” and there was a big JR logo on the side of the train itself, so that train wasn’t included in the JR pass. As we got closer to our destination, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the rainy weather was not going to magically dissipate when we left Tokyo. Neither of us had brought umbrellas and we were both regretting that decision.

The first thing we did in Fujiyoshida was go to the tourist information area, where Trisna tried to figure out exactly how to get to Hakone from where they were at. It took a while to run through every possible train combination, but the end result was that there was really no good way to get to Hakone through JR. In fact, because we took a private line to get to Fujiyoshida in the first place, there was no way to go anywhere else except by a non-JR option. After much discussion, we elected to take the bus to Rotenba, and then take the JR to Odawara. From there, it was (theoretically) possible to walk to Hakone. I was not very involved with this process, and instead was talking to the other lady at the tourist counter about various things (why we were there, where we wanted to see, no trisna is not my girlfriend, japanese people who don’t like kanji). She said my accent was good.

Fujiyoshida is most famous for being really, really close to Mount Fuji. Despite this, we could not see Mount Fuji at all. Theoretically, it would look like this, but the sky was a solid shade of grey the entire time we were there.

After leaving the tourist counter, we bought umbrellas at the first place we could find. The prices were significantly lower than Tokyo. I got a kind that can be retracted into incredibly small sizes so I can carry it with me on “just in case” days. As I learned from carrying it around for the day, I definitely want to use my bigger, more expensive one if there’s a decent chance of rain. The smaller one pretty much behaved like a $3.50 umbrella should.

As for Fujiyoshida itself, the main attraction other than Mount Fuji was a large Shinto shrine called Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen Jinja. It seemed like as good of an idea as any to go there at this point. The rain continued to pour and the streets were empty. We reached a really long pathway surrounded by trees on the way to the temple. The path itself was covered with puddles and water flowing pretty quickly downhill from the temple area. I was eager to get underneath a roof and took a moment to appreciate how much similar our current situation was to a horror movie premise. (“Let’s take refuge from the storm in that old, distant temple“)

The temple was pretty similar to other Shinto temples I’ve been to so far. It was still cool, because every one is a little different and has it’s own atmosphere. This one was more open than most, and felt more like it was part of the forest than other temples that felt wedged in the middle of a big city.

So, we hung around there and then left.

After that, we tried to squeeze whatever fun we could out of the city before proceeding to spot number two. The rain and the sky was definitely bumming us out, so we gave up after a bit. We headed back to the station and bought tickets for the bus to Rotembo. I’m not even going to try and make a bus ride sound exciting. At least it was better than the bus we rode in China from Pingyao to Beijing. Only a few people get that reference. (hint: it was a really crappy bus ride)

At Rotembo, we decided just to press on toward Odawara. I kind of liked the idea of being only one train ride away from Shinjuku. I should mention that although most of the trains took between 45 minute to an hour, it wasn’t that bad. We always got a seat and the scenery was kind of nice despite the weather.

At Odawara, we finally had dinner/lunch/breakfast at Matsuya. The main tourist attraction there was Odawara castle. Despite being a reconstruction, it looked pretty cool. The grounds itself was pretty fun to walk around in. I don’t know why, but they had monkeys in a cage, too.

While walking to a Kyudo range which turned out to look more like a backyard, Trisna slipped and fell and she had to wash her clothes with a hose on the outside of a bathroom. We were both pretty wet anyway from the rain, so it wasn’t a big deal. But morale was starting to get chippy and we nonverbally agreed not to attempt to walk to Hakone (which would involve walking at least a few miles on a toll road). Instead, since Odawara was on the coast, we just decided to check out the beach and then call it a day. On the map it did say “Odawara Beach,” so one would expect a beach. I thought about the times at the Oregon coast that I’ve looked across the horizon and thought about the other coasts on the other side. It might be nice to do the same looking west.

Well, this is what the “beach” looks like in Odawara.

About par for the coast for this trip. (edit: I made an accidental pun and I’m going to leave it in there)

I’m not going to say that it was a “bad” trip, but pretty much any trip I do in the future will be better. We both learned some things about traveling that will make future trips better, and now I have four more days of a JR rail pass that I can spread out until October. At the very least, there are two cities that I can put a little marker on in Google Earth.

I’m reminded that the Kamakura trip is in only 10 days, and my trip to the Ghibli museum is next Saturday. Hopefully the entries accompanying those trips will be a little more exciting.