Getting to Hakone

Posting by Noah Goldbaum:

After our last day outside of Tokyo, we had a long trip to our new hotel. First we took a bus to the Tokyo Train Station (Tokyo Eki). It took about 45 minutes to get there. We had to drive through Tokyo and we saw lots of glass buildings and we even saw vines growing up the side of a building (in and out of these vents). At 10:30am we got to the station at last!

We had an hour and a half until we had to catch the bullet train (the shinkansen). We took our luggage all the way around the train station looking for a place to eat but all the restaurants didn't open until 11:00am. It took us a long time to find a restaurant. I was feeling a little grumpy and sad. I didn't like having to lug my luggage around because my backpack kept falling off the suitcase. I ate a little bit of noodles (ramen).

After we ate, we went to the shinkansen. Robert and I thought there were going to be computers on the train because we saw a poster that had computers on a train. Unfortunately there weren't any computers. Before we got on the train Mom took a picture of me pointing to the sign posting our train and time of departure. Finally we got on the train. The shinkansen was going very fast, but it didn't seem like it. There wasn't anything very interesting outside, just lots of buildings that didn't look so different from the U.S. Did you ever ride a shinkansen?

We got to Odawara Station (near Hakone) and then we had to catch another bus to Hakone. We were an hour early, so Mom and Ruby went to get some ice cream. While Mom and Ruby were gone, Robert and I played with our BeyBlades on the sidewalk. It was very hot out, so we went under a tree. Later Mom and Ruby came back with the ice cream. After we ate, we went on the bus early, so we took some pictures. The bus driver let Robert sit way up front and I sat right behind him. Obaachan told us that we would be driving up a steep and scary mountain on narrow winding roads, and that it would be very scary riding up front.

On the bus ride, I saw a girl wearing a kimono, a big old Japanese castle, two small waterfalls, and lots and lots of bamboo. When we were riding up the mountain, there was a big valley of trees. There was this part of the road that was very very twisty. There was a GPS screen at the front of the bus and we could see the shape of the road was like a curvy zig-zag. I also saw a cyclist riding up the mountain! Imagine riding several miles straight up a mountain on a bike! That would be pretty hard! We also saw a very fast and very big green, black and brownish beige colored pirate ship on a lake. I hope we go on that ship; it might be exciting!

Finally we got there after what seemed like 10 minutes, but it was really an hour.