Addis’ Trip in Japan: Hakone Day 1

Today didn’t start out super well considering I woke up at midnight and couldn’t go back to sleep because my roommate was snoring loudly. I’m a pretty light sleeper so most noises wake me up and then keep me awake.

We ate the complimentary breakfast at about 7am, at this point I had already been awake for seven hours and had called home to talk to my family.

We began our day trip bus ride to Hakone at around 8.30am. We hit our first pit stop at 10am to get some food.

I had this meat pie. It’s almost like a pork meatball that’s flattened then wrapped in dough. It’s then seared on both sides until golden brown.

After our pit stop, we went to a Sakura festival where you’re able to see Mount Fuji at the same time. We were apparently really lucky, as it was raining the entire time there until we started getting closer and we started to see blue skies.

It was a gorgeous day for us to be there and probably my favorite part of the trip so far.

I had some delicious strawberry daifuku which is a whole strawberry wrapped in mochi.

After a few hours there we ventured off to the historical Fuji museum.

There was actually a little stall in there for people (aka tourists) to do a 10 minute photo session after someone dresses you in a wedding style kimono. I got some awesome pictures that a friend took of me in one, but I won’t be posting my face on here, sorry.

We then traveled through small towns and rice patty fields until around 5pm when we finally arrived at out hotel: a Ryoukan in Atami.

Our hotel even has an onsen on the very top floor. Onsens are a hot spa, usually a hot spring. In most onsens, you are not allowed any clothes and tattoos. So you go in your birthday suit and have to cover all tattoos with bandaids or gauze.

We checked out around our hotel first though since we were right next to the beach.

After walking around, we went back to the hotel to get dressed in our yukatas (cotton kimono) for our traditional Japanese meal.

Completely stuffed, my three roommates and I hobbled back to our room to get some sleep. After being up for 20 hours, I know I’m going to be able to sleep really well tonight, hopefully sound enough to even ignore the snoring.

I’ll update everyone again tomorrow after our day through Hakone.

Good day and good night from Atami, Japan.

Addis