January 28, 1971: Tokyo Tower and Our Return to Korea
	January 26, 1971: Photographing Fuji- Otsuki and Kawaguchiko
	Return to the Index for the Japan Trip

Thursday, the 14th, was to be just about the best day we spent in Japan. We saw more and did more than in any other day, and the whole trip would have been worth just this one 24-hour period. The trip is called the Golden Course by tourists and Japanese alike. The guidebook was invaluable, in preparing us for what to expect. The day dawned early and bright, and we started out hoping that on this day Fuji would not disappoint us.

About the "Golden Course"

The Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park is Easter Japan's most popular playground. But don't be misled ty the "National Park" designation. The Japanese have tha amiable habit of declaring their most beautiful areas national parks, no matter what they contain. And this one contains everything.

Within a few hours from Tokyo, presided over by the majestic Mount Fuji (12,388 feet) and a host of lesser mountains, are centuries-old villages, five major lakes, hot springs, resort hotels so fully equipped they're like little towns, fantastic views from rugged peaks, the second-longest cable-car ride in the world, mile after mile of rock-strewn seacoast beginning with an Acapulco-like town called Atami, and, finally, an island- Oshima- housing a still active volcano.

There's almost no limit to the number and variety of places to visit in this area, and our guidebook laid out a three-day-two-night tour incorporating almost all of them. We don't have time to do all that, but the first eight-hour sightseeing section known as the "Golden Course" was, as the guidebook pointed out, quite feasible to do as a day trip from Tokyo to Lake Ashi and back- hectic though that day might be.

Every day, trains leave Shinjuku station on the Odakyu railway line for Hakone-Yumoto, about a 90-minute ride. This is what people taking a few days do. But we just had the day, so our transportation route was different. We got off one stop before Hakone-Yumoto in the town of Odawara. (These trains were unlike all the others we'd been on; they were quite plushy and spacious. The furnishings were quite nice, probably because the same company that owns this line also owns the Odakyu Department Store that we visited on our first day in the city of Tokyo.) In Odawara, we changed trains to the Hakone Tozan Railway up the valley to Gohra.

From Gohra, we began the Golden Course by taking the tramway up the mountain to Sounzan. Here, we switched to the second-longest cable railway in the world for a 40-minute ride to the shores of Lake Ashi (invariably and wrongly called Lake Hakone by most tourists, including ourselves, occasionally). The cable car passes over a wide, 400-foot deep, foul-smelling valley called Kowakidani which means "Valley of the Lesser Boiling" and which is pockmarked with locations where boiling sulphur springs have broken through the sandy surface.

There is a stop halfway along that has a revolving little tea room, but we continued down the hillside to the shores of Lake Ashi. Getting off the cable car, we were in Togendai, at the eastern end of the lake (which has an 11-mile shoreline). This is supposed to be a good place to view Mount Fuji on a clear day- but these are few and far between.

From Togendai, tourist boats make the 40-minute trip across this lovely lake to the small town of Moto-Hakone for only 130Y. On the way, we passed the International Village on our left. The village is comprised of 30 different houses, each representative of a different country. (Oddly, the American house features a soda fountain.) Above the International Village is the steep Mount Komagatake (4400 feet) which has an all-year ice skating rink on the top and is now accessible by a new cable railway from Hakone-en, a short bus ride from the terminus of the boat ride.

The end of the boat ride is actually the end of the Golden Course portion of the tour. Tourists spending multiple days here go onward to the southwest, but we needed to return to Tokyo. So we took the bus to Hakone-en and then the cable railway up Mount Komagatake and down the other side. There, we got a bus back to the train station in Hakone-Yumoto where we got a train back to the city.

From Tokyo to Odawara

From the Sanno we took first a subway (and note the various forms of transportation we used and see if we missed any) to the Shinjuku station, and then caught the train for Odawara, a town down below Yokohama south of the Tokyo metropolitan area. The ride down was like our train ride to Nikko, with the same kind of trackside scenery.

A bridge South of Tokyo on the train for Odawara

A scene along the railway line from Tokyo to Odawara

The ride down to Odawara was really pleasant; as I said earlier, the cars were rather plush.

"Where's Fuji?"

I am sure you can tell, from the caption of the picture at left, that his page was created later than 1971, as there is an anachronism in that caption that dates this page to at least 1987. ("Where's Fuji?" is a take on "Where's Wally?", a series of children's books published beginning in 1987 by a British cartoonist and sketch artist. The book series was retitled to "Where's Waldo?" in North America, for reasons I have been unable to discover.)

Anyway, you will also recall that we did not get very good pictures of Mt. Fuji yesterday because of the clouds. Today, however, the sky is clear (for now) and if you look closely at the picture you will notice Mt. Fuji in the distance, just above the left side of the three-storey white building in the distance. The snow cap on top of the mountain seems to just hang in the air, because we are actually too far away to make out the lower slopes of the mountain, as there is little snow on them to reflect the sunlight and stand out from the background of blue sky.

(Some people who have looked at this photo tell me that they can see those slopes, but I actually think that their mind is filling in the slope by following the line of the snowcap downward on either side. There are also, perhaps, recalling photographs of the peak that they have seen before.)

But Dan and I are hoping that as the day progresses, and we get closer to Fuji-san, we will be able to get better pictures, as I am still looking for my iconic photograph.

The Hakone Tozan Railway (Odawara to Gora)

When we got off the train from Tokyo in Odawara, we followed the directions in our guidebook and the signage in the Odawara Station to find the platform for the Hakone Tozan Railway, which would be our third transportation medium of the day (subway, train, mountain train).

The Hakone Tozan Line consists of two sections. The lower section from Odawara to Hakone-Yumoto is not particularly noteworthy. Far more interesting is the upper section from Hakone-Yumoto to Gora, which is served by the small mountain trains. The guidebook promised that the mountain railway would be scenic- and it was, beginning pretty quickly after our train stopped in Hakone-Yumoto:

There are a number of highways through this area, and we passed a number of road bridges. (Of course, we were going over bridges ourselves.)

These are some of the mountains along the Hakone Tozan Railway between Hakone Yumoto and Gora. This whole area reminds me very much of Colorado.

A ride on the Hakone Tozan Railway, Japan's oldest mountain railway, is a treat for more than just railway fans. The small trains wind themselves through a narrow, densely wooded valley over many bridges and tunnels, stopping at small stations along the way and changing directions at three switchbacks.

There are a number of "transfer sidings" along this railway, and this is one of them. Most of the railway is single-track, and places like these allow trains to pass each other.

Here is one road bridge and a railway bridge behind it. This is a section of the Hakone Tozan Railway that parallels the track of the Odawara-to-Hakone Yumoto, which is the railway bridge in the background.

The left-hand picture above is one of those transfer sidings. The train we are on will go straight ahead, to where the tracks end, wait for a car coming down to meet it here, then the switch will change and the car we are in go off on the track that passes us on the right, coming back in this direction, and continue up the hill.

At many points, we came out of the forested areas and pretty vistas opened up. Some of my pictures turned out well, but those I took with the telephoto usually didn't (for reasons that I did not discover on this trip).

The day was pretty nice, and the mountain scenery pretty spectacular- although people that live here probably think it pretty ho-hum.

I put on my telephoto to zoom in on the ridgeline row of trees a ways in the distance.

In addition to the passing procedure at a number of places, there were also places where the train had to zig-zag up steep hills. This could only be done because, unlike many trains, the mountain railway trains don't have a "front" or "back"; in this they are more like subways.

This is some mountain scenery along the rail line just east of Gora.

This resort hotel is in the forest near Gora.

The 45-minute ride from the Hakone-Yumoto station to Gora is especially beautiful in June and July when thousands of hydrangea are in bloom along the tracks and are illuminated during the evenings. Today, however, while the weather seemed to be quite good through the first 95% of the trip, as we climbed and approached Gora, it got significantly more cloudy and a good bit more dismal. Perhaps Fuji simply does not want our task to be easy.

The Cable Railway (Gora to Sounzan)

When we got of the Hakone Tozan Railway in Gora, we found ourselves in the small Gora Station. This station is the terminus for the Hakone Tozan line, and also the terminus for the Hakone Tozan Cable Car.

Gōra Station is a terminal railway station on the Hakone Tozan Line as well as the Hakone Tozan Cable Car, and is located in Hakone, Kanagawa, Japan. It is 10 miles from the Hakone Tozan Line's southern terminus at Odawara Station. At an altitude of 1,749 ft, it is the highest railway station in Kanagawa Prefecture.

Gōra Station has two side platforms, which are staggered, so that they do not directly oppose each other.

Gōra Station was opened on June 1, 1919 as a station on the Hakone Tozan Line. The Hakone Tozan Cable Car began operations from December 1, 1921, but operations were suspended from February 11, 1944 through July 1, 1950.

In doing my research for creating this page, I found that the station you see in my picture above is no longer there. It was torn down and replaced in 1977- six years after our visit.

The Hakone Tozan Cable Car, officially the Cable Line, is a funicular railway. It is operated by Hakone Tozan Railway, who also operate the Hakone Tozan mountain railway line. The company belongs to the Odakyū Group, which also owns department stores throughout Japan.

The funicular links Gōra, the upper terminus of the railway line, with Sōunzan- 702 ft above. At Sōunzan, connection is made with the Hakone Ropeway, which runs to Tōgendai on Lake Ashi.

The line opened in 1922, but still appears to be in very good shape. In the picture at right, you can see the view ahead on the funicular. When we got on, there were not many people, but I still made a beeline for the front of the car so that I could watch out the front window as we made our ascent.

The ascent was at least as steep as it looks. The tramway ran right up the mountain to Sounzan in one straight line. (When we get to Sounzan, we will be transferring onto our fifth different transportation mode of the morning.) So far, we have taken the subway, the train, a narrow-gauge shuttle train and the funicular.

Our short ride on the funicular made me wish just for a bit that I had purchased a movie camera in addition to the 35-mm Nikon that I actually bought. It would have been nice to have a movie of our ride up the mountain, but then lugging around a movie camera with all the other stuff you need would have been a chore.

In another aside, I might note that the funicular we are riding on will last another 25 years, making almost three-quarters of a century of operation until its rebuilding in 1995. At that time, the track will be reinforced and rebuilt in sections, and new, modern cars will replace the old ones in which we rode. The cars will be replaced again in 2020, with higher-capacity cars each carrying 125 passengers.

I was more interested in the funicular than in the cloudy scenery outside, but I did take a couple of pictures during our short (10-minute) ride up the mountain to Sounzan:

From the rail station in Gora, that is Mt. Kowakudani, shrouded in clouds.

These are some of the mountains just below Sounzan, Japan.

The Hakone Ropeway (Sounzan to Owakudani)

At Sounzan, we continued our Golden Course odyssey with our fifth transportation mode of the day- the Hakone Ropeway.

At left is an aerial view of these two segments of our trip on the Golden Course- the funicular from Gora to Sounzan and the three-segment cableway between Sounzan and Tōgendai. This was the second time I had ridden a cableway in my life- the first being two days ago on our trip to Nikko.

I suppose it might be appropriate here to talk a bit about this ropeway, which is a form of what is generally named "cableway transport".

Any of you who have been to a ski resort have seen this type of transport; at most resorts, there aren't cablecars at all, but rather just open-air chairs (with seatbelts, I guess, although I've never been on one). But I've seen pictures of these ski lifts in operation, and I can see that when a chair (which is attached by a grip to the moving cable) reaches the top or bottom, skiers typically have to jump quickly off so the chair can turn around to pick up another pair or group of skiers going up (or down, I suppose). The chairs aren't moving very fast, but still I imagine that it takes a bit of getting used to to get on and off quickly.

Now imagine that same thing but with enclosed cars rather than open-air seats. That is basically what a cableway is.

By the time I write some of this in 2021, I have ridden on a number of cable cars- of all different kinds in all different places. The cars I have been on are quite large, many holding 20-25 people or more. But I never gave much thought to how these actually work. When I have gotten on and off it has seemed to me that the car was stationary; there was plenty of time to get leisurely on or off. But I now understand that arranging things this way (which is a necessity) is pretty tricky- depending on whether the main cables keep moving. When they do, there are various ways to slow the cars down (or even stop them for a time) while passengers get on and off. But I won't bother to include those explanations here (although they are quite interesting).

The Hakone Ropeway is the name of an aerial lift, as well as its operator. The cableway is part of the Golden Course- the sightseeing route that we are following between Odawara and Lake Ashi.

This cableway is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it climbs and descends more than all but a handful of such systems across the globe. It is also a single-cable system with two intermediate stations, and as you will find if you investigate, intermediate stations are tricker to design and operate than just a two-station, terminus to terminus system.

At right is a diagram of the Hakone Ropeway.

One of the first things to say is that, like many of the places and things I experienced in the 1970s, the ropeway has changed a good deal in recent years. When Dan and I traveled on it, it was a single-cable system through all four stations. In the early part of the 21st century, though, the system was changed to what is called a "funitel", which is a double-cable system that allows for more cars and thus more traffic. Also, the system was broken at the Owakudani Station to allow for more cars from the peak to the lake than from the peak to Sounzan.

But on the day we were here, it was one continuous trip, and we did not have to change cars throughout the trip. We did follow the recommendation in our guidebook, however, and we got off at the Owakudani Station to take a quick look around and take some pictures.

Probably the best way to organize the pictures we took while on the ropeway is to divide them into the three segments of the trip, with the first being the ascent from Sounzan to Owakudani Station and our passage over the Owakudani Valley.

While it probably won't add to your enjoyment of our trip to the Hakone Region of Japan, and while I could easily just show you the pictures we took on the way from Sounzan to Owakudani on the Ropeway, I found that the Google Maps aerial view of this section of the Ropeway trip to be quite interesting.

You may have found already, and you will certainly find if you continue through this photo album into the future, that I have often been able to juxtapose current (c. 2020) aerial views with actual pictures that I have taken. Of course, the further back I have gone, the less the aerial views match up to the pictures I took; 30, 40, and even 50 years can (and usually do) bring huge changes almost everywhere. I am sure that Japan is no exception, which is why I found this particular aerial view interesting.

In my pictures, you will see the Sounzan Station, a large ice rink that is part of a sports and recreation area, a resort, the Ropeway itself, and so on. As it turns out, these features still exist today, fifty years later, and I have found it interesting to point them out on the aerial view.

So when you look at some of my pictures below, you can relate them to the area as it exists today. While downtown Tokyo has changed dramatically, areas like Nikko and the Hakone Valley have not. Of course one would expect that mountains like Fuji and other natural features would not change, but out here in the relative hinterlands I thought it was interesting how so many of man's constructions have remained the same.

We have just departed Sounzan, and this looks back at the station terminus.

Just out of the station, we are looking north, and you can see the resort in the distance.

While we could not understand the announcements made in Japanese, I suspect that they said something about this being the longest cableway in Japan, some of the things we might see, the intermediate stations on the line, and the fact (which we read in the guidebook) that it takes about a half hour to get to the shores of Lake Ashi.

Shortly after leaving the station, as we were ascending rapidly, we passed over what appeared to be an outdoor ice rink to our north. I wondered whether it was actually a track that had been flooded for the winter season, as that was very much what it looked like. I took one normal view and one with my telephoto lens:

The most interesting thing along this part of the Ropeway was the fact that we were passing over Owakudani- one of the many areas in Japan that have active geothermal and/or volcanic features.

Active Thermal Vents at Owakudani

Ōwakudani (in Japanese literally "Great Boiling Valley") is a volcanic valley with active sulphur vents and hot springs here in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture. It was created around 3,000 years ago, as a result of the explosion of the Hakone volcano. The area is a popular tourist site for its scenic views, volcanic activity, and "kuro-tamago" ("black egg")— a local specialty of eggs hard-boiled in the hot springs. The eggs turn black and smell slightly sulphuric; eating one is said to add seven years to your life.

We certainly didn't see any black eggs, but we did take some interesting pictures of the sulphur vents as we passed over them (and smelled them). Here are a few of those pictures:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

The main components of the volcanic gas are water vapor, carbon dioxide, and also sulfur dioxide (sulfurous acid gas). Usually small amounts of hydrogen gas, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and hydrogen chloride are present. Some volcanoes may include hydrogen fluoride, silicon tetrafluoride, methane, ammonia, carbonyl sulfide, helium, radon, and mercury vapor, etc. These gases can cause great harm to animals and plants due to the toxic components and oxygen deficiency, and in many cases there is a large influence on the surrounding ecology due to the heat. At Hakone Ropeway, the gas concentrations are constantly measured so that the ropeway can operate in a way that ensures that our customers can enjoy it in safety (all this from one of the little signs in the ropeway car in which we were riding). I told Dan that it was comforting to know that the line would probably temporarily shut down if it appeared that their customers could get killed.

I got curious when I was creating this page, so I did some investigation on the ropeway, and found that, today, what with all our advancements in medical technology, the cautions promulgated by the ropeway are rather more explicit:

The Hakone Ropeway (Owakudani to Tōgendai)

Once we passed the volcanic vents, the rest of the trip down to Tōgendai station near the shore of Lake Ashi was just a picturesque ride above the fields and forests.

Fields

Forests

The Ropeway makes one dogleg at the next-to-last station before heading directly to the shore of Lake Ashi. Here is the view ahead looking towards that penultimate station.

We are getting closer to that station, now, and here is a view looking off towards the lake.

Still approaching that penultimate station, this view looks off to the north across some of the typical scenery here in the valley by the lake below Mt. Fuji.

Looking straight ahead, here is our next-to-last station. The last segment of the Ropeway stretches to the left (in the picture but not really visible) from that station down to the Tōgendai Station on the shore of the lake.

So now we made our final turn (I would have liked to have gotten off our car temporarily to watch how the change in direction is effected without our having to change cars in that station) and then headed slowly downward in a very slow descent to the Tōgendai Station.

Tōgendai Station

Here we are, just arriving now at Tōgendai Station near the shore of Lake Ashi.

Togendai Station, the starting point on the west side of the Hakone Ropeway, is on the shore of Lake Ashi. It is the arrival and departure point for the Hakone Pirate Ship, the Odakyu Hakone Highway Bus, numerous pleasure boats that criss-cross the lake, and the Hakone Tozan Bus. The building also had a number of little restaurants and shops, and it looked as if it had been recently renovated (which I suppose it had been to take advantage of the steady rise in tourism to Japan in the late 1950s and the 1960s).

We went through the turnstiles to get out onto the observation balcony at the station and looked off to the north. There, we got our first really decent view of what we had come to see yesterday and today.

Mt. Fuji

Lake Ashi and the entire Hakone area are presided over by Mt. Fuji, and more people visit this area of Japan than any other. Lake Ashi, and the attractions surrounding it must be on the list of every traveler. The valley looks like an extremely large country club.

At right you can see the best of the three or four pictures we tried to take of Fuji from here. The day was cloudy and hazy, and there was a lot of glare. I suppose that if I knew about filters and such for my new camera, I could have gotten better pictures. They look like clouds, but you can see the snow-covered lower slopes of the iconic mountain. Here is another view of the hilly area we are in:

Lake Ashi

From the top balcony at the station, Dan and I descended the outside stairs that led down to the parking areas for the station and the path that would take us down to the dock. From our investigations, we had concluded that we would take one of the cruise boats south across the lake.

In the picture at left, you can see the north end of the lake, and you can see the dock to which we are headed.

The trip so far from Tokyo has been immensely interesting. I have never before encountered so many different kinds of transportation and such scenic areas. I have heard much about the Mountain West in America, and I can say that when I drove across country to visit Peter two years ago, I saw some of that scenery. But I hardly left the Interstate as I needed to get to Fort Harrison to begin my military service. Perhaps if I had gotten off to explore areas like Lake Tahoe or Rocky Mountain National Park, I would have seen tramways and ropeways in my own country.

But Dan and I were amazed that in just over the 20 years since Japan was our country's worst enemy that no only has it appeared so far that no war was ever waged. The bombing of Tokyo has been said to have been the worst of the war- worse than Dresden or even the two Japanese cities that suffered atomic attack, but we saw absolutely no evidence that this had ever occurred. Even more interesting, I thought, was the fact that at no time in our visit so far were Dan or I made to feel uncomfortable for anything that might have happened in that conflict. I simply cannot imagine that we have not run into or have passed on the street someone whose life was dramatically altered by the war, or who lost close relatives or loved ones. But we were never accosted, blamed, or even treated badly in any way we could discern. This, to me, is very interesting, and perhaps one of these days someone can explain to me why this is.

NOTE:
I am, of course, creating these pages many, many years after this visit to Mt. Fuji. I actually have an answer to my musings above, which were actually expressed in a letter I wrote to my Mom and Dad when I sent my slides home to them. And I can tell you now that this answer would not be long in coming, and that it would come on a visit to the literal ground zero location where you might expect lingering antipathy towards America and Americans to be at its highest.

The Trip Across Lake Ashi to Moto-Hakone

Lake Ashi (also referred to as Hakone Lake) is a crater lake that lies along the southwest wall of the caldera of Mount Hakone, a complex volcano that last erupted in 1170. The lake is known for its views of Mount Fuji, although today is not a good day for viewing.

Looking North Across Lake Ashi

Being in a caldera, you would expect that surrounding the lake are numerous hot springs and other geothermal features, but there are also historical sites, and a number of resort-type facilities. There are pleasure boats and ferries that traverse the lake, and we are going to take one to the south end of it. Maybe when we get out on the lake we will get better views of Fuji; getting these views was one of the prime reasons we took this tour today.

We are taking a day trip here from Tokyo, but most visitors to Lake Ashi stay in one of the hotels or ryokan located in the area, and they will spend a day or two to visit some of the local attractions.

One of those is Hakone Shrine, a spot that has reputedly been visited by shōgun, samurai, and many travelers over the centuries. The shrine sits beside a section of the old road that used to connect Tokyo to the southern part of Japan, but of course that route has been upgraded to a major highway that now connects Tokyo and Kyoto. The Imperial Family used to have a summer retreat here, but many years ago this was turned into Onshi Park, a public park.

Many visitors, like us, follow "the Golden Course" day-trip from Tokyo, making use of the Hakone Ropeway across The Great Boiling Valley. Visitors who come here by car usually just take the Ropeway up to Sounzan and then return to the lake.

Coming down the stairs from the Ropeway terminal, we could see one of the Hakone Line cruise boats at a dock a few hundred feet down the lakeshore, and some commercial facilities beyond it.

This view looks pretty much west across the lake, and the slash along the hillside is part of one of the hold highways that connected Tokyo with the south. It replaced the old Imperial Road, and even better highways have been built east of the lake.

As you can see from some of these pictures, it is actually quite a sunny afternoon, but the clouds around seem to be keeping us from those incredible, iconic view of Mt. Fuji.

Visitors like us can take the Hakone Sightseeing Cruise with its pirate ships from Togendai to Moto-Hakone Port and Hakone-Machi Port on opposite ends of the lake. The cruise line began in 1950, and we will be taking the southern part of the trip. We are not particularly interested in the Pirate Ship, so we will take a more conventional ferry-type craft, like the one we could see a short distance away (picture at right).

When we got down to the shore, we found a little ticket facility, and followed the guidelines in our guidebook to ask for a ticket south to Moto-Hakone. The boat we would be taking was docked right in front of us. It was a craft that I had also photographed from the stairs down from the Ropeway terminal and you can see it in the picture at left.

The sunlight was very bright this afternoon, and being a novice with my new Nikon camera, I did not compensate for it very well. So this picture turned out quite dark. (When creating this page, I was able to lighten it somewhat, but there were other pictures I took from out on the lake that turned out to be too dark to salvage.)

The name of the lake was long ago shortened from "ashiko", a compound word that means "lake of reeds" in Japanese ("ashi" means "reed" and the suffix "ko" is traditionally a small body of water, or "lake"). The entire Hakone area, including the area around Lake Ashi and Mount Fuji itself, is criss-crossed with hiking trails, making the area popular with hikers and outdoorsmen. The lake has been preserved to great extent from development; in the United States, unless this lake were in a National Park, one would expect to see it lined with private residences and boat docks. While there are hotels and resorts around, the area seems quite uncommercialized.

It wasn't long before Dan and I boarded out small boat and we headed off south across Lake Ashi. There were not many people on the craft, probably because it was a weekday and very cold.

This picture looks back north across the lake. Fuji, which is still shrouded in clouds for the most part, is out of the picture to the left.

Dan photographed me at the stern of our excursion boat. If I look a little pained, it's because the weather was quite cold and I was wishing I'd brought a heavier jacket.

Going across the lake was very neat. I have not been on a boat of any kind in a long, long while. Indeed, I can't recall the last time I was on one. So I was wandering around the boat looking at everything and having a great time.

I've mentioned that one of the boats is a pirate ship, and this is it. I don't know if the cost to take one of these craft is any different from the dollar and a half that we paid.

This view looks down the eastern shore of the lake in the direction we are heading. We are coming up on the "International Village" and the Hakone Shrine.

While riding on the cruise boat, Dan and I were discussing our return route to Tokyo once we arrived at Moto-Hakone. We'd planned on taking a bus straight back to Odawara, but we had learned that there was another cableway from another spot on the eastern lake shore that went to the top of Mt. Hakone and then back down to the lake. We decided to return that way, and so we eventually stayed on the boat we'd taken across the lake and got off at the International Village, a stop it made on the way north but not on the way south.

In the pictures above are two views of what is called the "International Village", a residential and recreational area built in conjunction with the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. It wasn't for athletes nor did it have actual event venues, but it was more of a tourist thing, with structures in the styles of various countries. At the same time, the Hakone Komagatake Ropeway was built to the summit of Mt. Hakone to offer Olympics visitors easier panoramic views of Mt. Fuji, and also give them access to the upper part of the Hakone Shrine. You can see this ropeway in the picture at left, and some of the other structures of the Village in the picture at right. Sadly, we did not visit the shrine itself.

As I've mentioned earlier, one of the major reasons why Dan and I came and did the "Golden Course" today was so we could capture that iconic view of Mt. Fuji. In this objective we were ultimately disappointed, but we did get a few views that I want to go ahead and include here; they were all taken from the boat out on Lake Ashi.

At left is probably the best view that I got. You can see the peak and eastern slopes of Fuji clearly, although there are clouds obscuring the clear outline of the western slopes. This was taken with my new telephoto lens, which is why the foreground hills are so dark. Below is another view, taken from a slightly different angle:

The last good view was taken as the boat headed back north for its stop at the International Village. You may have to look closely to see Fuji in the center of the image.

In researching for this page, of course, I came across numerous pictures of Fuji taken from the lake by professional photographers who had the ability and the patience to wait for the perfect time of the perfect day, and you can easily find them yourself. But we didn't have that luxury, as we had to take what we could get on our trip here today.

We docked at the International Village about three-thirty to begin our trip back to Tokyo.

The Return Trip to Tokyo

The excursion boat let us off at the International Village, and it was a short walk from the dock to the terminal station for the Komagatake Ropeway to the Komagatake peak of Mount Hakone

The Hakone Komagatake Ropeway, not to be confused with the Hakone Ropeway that we took to get here in the first place, leads from the shore of Lake Ashi to near the Komagatake peak of Mount Hakone. After we'd waited for just a few minutes, a car (the car we would take) came down from the peak into the station.

When visibility is good, panoramic views of Lake Ashi (which we did get) and Mount Fuji (which we didn't) can be enjoyed from the ropeway's upper station. A short walk away, on the actual peak of Komagatake, stands the Hakone Shrine Mototsumiya, the original Hakone Shrine, whose main site is now located on the more easily accessible shores of the lake. (Sadly, we did not think to take the time to walk over there; the day seemed to be getting darker and more overcast.)

This entire area is criss-crossed with hiking trails, and is a popular place for daytrippers from Tokyo and Kyoto. The trails are mostly in the forest, and we were given to understand that there are only limited views from them, and that they are sometimes closed when there is volcanic activity in the area.

There were good view on the ride up to the top of the peak, although they would have been much better had it been earlier in the day and had it not been so cloudy.

Getting off the boat in the Village, we caught the ski lift at its station and rising high over the area you can see the Southern end of the lake with the town of Hakone.

Here is a view of the southern end of Lake Ashi, the town of Hakone, and the mountains surrounding the lake, taken from the ski lift above the International Village.

By the time we had gotten up to this height, which would have offered a spectacular view of Fuji, it was socked in and remained so for the rest of the day. So, except for the shots late the day before, I came away from Japan without a good picture, suitable for framing. I am told by the people at the Sanno, however, that days on which such views are available are very rare.

In this view, taken from higher up, you can see the middle part of Lake Ashi, and one of the cruise boats making its way up to the north.

Nearing the peak, this view looks north across the mountains in the general direction of Tokyo.

During our trip on the ropeway, we got to see some of the other attractions in the area. Several more attractions are located in the area around the ropeway's lower station at the shores of Lake Ashinoko, known as Hakone-en. These include some Prince Hotel-affiliated lodgings, a golf course and a few minor attractions such as a small aquarium and petting zoo.

We are almost at the peak, now. This must be one of the most unusual golf courses in the world, being literally on a mountaintop.

Just before the car came into the terminal, I got one last view looking across the tops of the mountaintops in the direction of Mt. Fuji, which is socked in.

We had not been quite sure what the next travel mode would be, but when we got to the top of Mt. Hakone, we found that it would be another tramway. These tramways are certainly not for the squeamish, because they tilt at quite an angle. The car itself is like an enclosed set of stairs. Each seat is on a different level, but each is level in itself. You can see in the pictures below just how steep this tramway really is.

We did not have to wait long for the next car that would take us down to the small village at other side of Mt. Hakone where we would catch a bus back to Odawara. This tramway is the kind with just two cars; as one ascends, the other descends, and squarely in the middle of the track there is a place where the two cars can pass each other. (You can see that section in the picture at right.) Also in the picture at right, the cable for the car is on the bottom, and the electricity provided on the top. Down at the bottom, in the parking lot, you can pick out the bus, waiting to take us to Odawara.

Below is a picture of the upper section of the tramway:

On the whole, I should say that transportation in Japan was quite an experience. The variety alone, and witness all the different forms in this one day, is amazing. Another quality, and a good one, is the frequency and punctuality of arrival. The longest wait for any particular mode was about ten minutes, and often it seemed as if the system were running for our benefit only, as the waits were so short. Connections were always smooth, once we learned the knack of reading the station signs. The US could learn a lot from the Japanese about transportation systems.

After finishing the Golden Course, we took the train back to Tokyo, and got back to the Sanno about seven, ate dinner, spent a few hours wandering around Shinjuku, and took a last trip down to the Ginza for pastry.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	January 28, 1971: Tokyo Tower and Our Return to Korea
	January 26, 1971: Photographing Fuji- Otsuki and Kawaguchiko
	Return to the Index for the Japan Trip