Sons of Loki

The weekend before last – christ, the weekend before last! – Jade and I took a trip out to Hakone, one of my favourite little destinations easily reached from Tokyo.

I’d been ill most of the week before, and I prayed it wouldn’t spread into the next week, my final week in Japan. For some reason we went out on Friday night and slept outside the Nomura building and then, when a guard moved us on, outside Shinjuku Keio station waiting for the last train (always a fun experience), so we only got to Hakone at 4pm-ish, leaving no time for sightseeing. Still, we had a wander about Hakone in the beautiful late afternoon/early evening.

Down by the river we joined a few other sightseeings in dipping our feet in the water and watching fish flutter past. It was a very peaceful scene.

Back to the ever-excellent Fuji-Hakone Guesthouse where I met up with Yuuka, one of the staff who I knew from last time. I guess I’m sort of getting to be a regular there now, this being my fourth time back there.

Down to the Susuki Fields, just up the road, where they filmed a few scenes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. (I kid, but this particular field was the inspiration for the place where Kensuke and Shinji camp out in an early episode.)

Then ramen and gyoza at China House, this reasonably-priced restaurant just down the road, and back to the guesthouse for those unsurpassable Hakone hot spring onsen. The heat! The calm! The aroma of the volcanic waters! I realised it would be the last time I visited an onsen for a long time.

After a great night’s sleep on the guesthouse’s futons, Jade and I had breakfast, said our goodbyes to Yuuka and the staff (promising to come back when we were able), and set off for a day in beautiful Hakone.

I wanted to find the point in that episode of Evangelion where Misato and Shinji look out from the heights of Mt Kintoki, but the closest the bus got us was a golf course, and in the heat of the day I didn’t really feel like going for a hike.


So we got the bus back to Togendai, boat across the lake to Moto-Hakone. All very familiar, but still fun. Seeing as it was summer and I wasn’t on my own, it seemed like I finally had the chance to do something I always enjoy doing: get a boat.

“There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”


It was fun, though a pedalo can’t exactly hit a great speed, and there were a few hairy moments where we got caught up in the wake of one of the big tourist boats and wobbled precariously with several hundred pounds worth of camera equipment around our necks. Nevertheless, somehow we survived and got back to dry land, heading up to the lakeside torii and the nearby shrine.



Then the boat back across Ashinoko up to Togendai, at the north end of the lake.

君が代は
千代に八千代に
さざれ石の
いわおとなりて
こけの生すまで

At Owakudani, we bought the famous black eggs that add five years to your life, and I scoffled a few down, having eaten enough there to give me a few hundred years of extra living (if the cholesterol doesn’t get me first). Fuji was invisible, regrettably.

I bought a folding screen of the cover of Pinkerton Hiroshige’s Night Snow at Kambara. As we went to get the ropeway back down to Gora, the tannoy thanked us for our continued patronage. And that’s when I realised: four times, I’ve been there. Hakone’s not the prettiest place in the world, but somehow it just feels right. It’s far enough from Tokyo to be out of the smog and the bustle, but close enough to be convenient; there’s always something different each time you go, whether it’s ice and rain or sun and clear skies. I really like it there. I hope to head back there soon enough.

Hakone is a pleasant little weekend out of Tokyo; a chance to get back to nature, soak in an onsen, feel the cool, clean air customary to places that aren’t the Big Toke.

I went there back in 2007, and it’s a cheap enough little excursion that I decided to do it all over again, even the same onsen I stayed at (and thoroughly enjoyed). Really could have done with it a few weeks ago during winter break, but I just didn’t have the money.

But I got the tickets yesterday and booked the room and today boarded the smart Romance Car Limited Express and reclined in my smart chair with a view of the beautiful Odakyu line from my window. (Okay, less than beautiful in the suburbs.)

It’s kinda sweet how all the Tokyo private lines are the same except for little differences, like how Keio has Hello Kitty on its “the doors will remove your fingers” warning signs and Odakyu has a tanuki. (Obviously my train, being the ROMANCE CAR, didn’t have such frivolities.) Ah, how pleasant to watch the sardines packed into the regular express trapped in the station as we roll past without stopping. (If I had Microsoft Train Simulator I could drive this train virtually! but perhaps best if not)

At Hakone-Yumoto I leisurely sauntered out into the chilly winter air and caught a bus down to Moto-Hakone.

I was going to get the fake pirate ship straight across Lake Ashi, but I was wary of going through everything too quickly (it had just gone 12) so I strolled down to the floating tori by the Hakone shrine, where I hadn’t gone last time. Along the way, I noticed icicles had formed on the chains by the water. Chilling.

Someone’s dad said “Samui!” (“Cold!”) to me, possibly unintentionally, but I replied with an earnest “Sou, ne.” The shrine was pretty, and peaceful, and I threw my coins in the little box and rang the bell. Then back to the boat and across the lake. I wrapped my hood around my head to try to stave off the chill in the air.

At Togendai I disembarked, but I wasn’t quite ready to go straight to the cable car into the mountains, so I flipped through my little coupon book I’d got from the guy at the Odakyu service counter in Shinjuku (how very distant that feels now) and found a nearby sento hot spring for 600 yen. Bargain.
(In the Togendai tourist information booth they had a poster of Rei and Shinji from Evangelion looking smart with the words  “yokoso Togendai e” (“welcome to Togendai”) which threw me a little until I remembered that in about five years’ time Togendai is scheduled to become Tokyo-3, according to the series’ chronology, and is thus the setting for much of the action in Evangelion. Quite a cute little thing to have up in the window.)

The hot spring was in a nearby hotel called the Lake Hotel, and as I crossed an empty car park with no one else in sight towards this building that bore more than a slight resemblance to a nursing home, I felt something I haven’t felt since the last time I was in Japan; that heady joy of not knowing what you’re doing, where you’re going, if there’s anyone here who you can communicate with, if there’s anyone here at all, if you’re meant to be here cus I don’t see anyone else uh shit help kind of feeling. It was nostalgia-inducing.

The bath was open and it was pleasant enough. Shared it with a couple other Japanese guys who didn’t seem to mind me. There was a nice view of a tiny garden outside with a bird fluttering about, which was nice too. I soaked awhile, then dried and weighed myself (I apparently lost a kilo in sweat since this morning).

Then back for the old cable car up to old Owakudani, land of fire and ice.

circular polarising filter + polarised glass = purple haze (all in my brain)

And it really was; I’d already seen patches of snow on the way up, and in the car up we had not only an impressive vista of Fuji-san (I know the “san” in Fuji-san means “mountain”, not the honorific title as in Daniel-san, but it amuses me to think of an actual Mr Fuji) but also of snow and boiling clouds of sulphurous gases erupting from the volcanic vents. (I’m sure Japanese and British people have a kinship because we both love to talk about the obvious. The two women in my car noticed some snow on the ground. “Yuki ga futtandesu ne.” “(Snow has fallen, hasn’t it.”) “Sou da ne.” (“Yup.”)

Fuji-san was beautiful as always:

man. fuji-san.

Anyway, on the ground in Owakudani there was the beautiful contradiction of icy boulders and bubbling 80 C pools of clay-dirtied water. I grabbed another pack of the famed black eggs of Hakone (they add five years to your life, so with the ones I ate last time I must be a centurion at least by now).

The left pool has a chunk of ice floating in it. The right is steaming with heat.

"...whoaa, I've seen fire, and I've seen rain..."

Snow began to fall. The sun began to tumble down from the sky. Fuji wrapped up warm, in a blanket of clouds. A voice on the loudspeaker yelled about the last cable car being in 15 minutes, so I hurried to go.

"Do you think the end of the world is coming?" "So says the preacher man, but, I don't go by what he says."

I got on what I thought was the right bus and happily ended up back at the Fuji Hakone Onsen, the place I stayed at in 2007. The kind woman showed me round the place, and by the time she’d got halfway I hadn’t the heart to tell her I’d done it all before and I knew here everything was, so I just nodded.

So I’m back in what I think is even the same room, just filled up on ramen at the local Chinese place (it’s weird eating alone in a strange town), pretty pooped. Jus’ wanna unwiiind in a hot bath or two. (I just installed the new Picasa and it has face detection, which is awesome, except when it picks up on people you don’t know. I have a gallery of the grinning faces of all the complete strangers who have ever been in the background of my photos. All unique. All nameless. Who are these people? Why were they there, passing as I happened to take a photo? It’s far out.)