We spent a night in Hakone, a geothermally active area in the mountains below Mt. Fuji.

The "Romance Car", a nonstop train that took us to Hakone-Yumoto. I don't know what was romantic about it. There weren't any seven foot glass martini-shaped spas. Rather than carry our big bulky suitcases on the train, we had them sent directly to our hotel in Kyoto, and carried what we needed in our day pack. This is how you travel in Japan. Pay attention! Your gear travels separately, maybe arrives the next day, but through the crowded stations you have only what you're going to be using immediately. So pack accordingly. The business of making the world Safe for Humans has gone uneconomically far in the last century and a half, and we are in the process of retreating from it. The response of advanced nations to the Germ Theory of Disease, for example, has been to sterilize the water supply. But only a tiny fraction of the water we use is for drinking; why chlorinate all of it? So you see the water supplies deteriorating, and ourselves drinking bottled water. Another example: decent habitation. The building codes run hundreds of pages describing how a house must be built so that a human can live in it and not be squashed in an earthquake, or asphyxiated or burnt or whatever. But, guess what, your jet ski doesn't need all that. Anybody can buy 12 bedrooms full of junk, it's almost impossible not to, but who can afford a 12-bedroom house with proper ventilation and wheelchair accessibility for the U-Haul box that has your High School Yearbook and graduation tassel? So, once again, we are starting to double track: a modest house for our personal selves, and a blockhouse for all the out of season stuff. As this applies to travel, the Japanese are inventing the way forward. The local convenience store and every hotel is a freight forwarding service. Your suitcases don't go by Shinkansen. You do.

Hakone-Yumoto. The guidebook points out that only three rivers in japan are free flowing and untamed.

There's a popular circuit of the Hakone area, which we went on immediately after arriving. First you go on a little train...

... and then a little funicular ...

... and then a ropeway (which isn't finished, so we went on a bus for part of its route) ...

... and then a boat, followed by a bus back to Hakone-Yumoto.

The ropeway takes you up to some active sulfur vents.

They sell eggs which have been hard-boiled in the sulfur steam.

It turns them black. There was a minimum purchase of six eggs, but we only ate two right away.

The ropeway terminal on the hill in the background, taken from the place where you buy the eggs.

37th view of Mt. Fuji.

Some girls who wanted to take our picture, so we took theirs. Who try dunk black white red have.

Eggs being shuttled down to the shop below.

Statues on the boat.

Another boat in the fleet.

Mt. Fuji from the lake.

Mmm ... coffee and sausage!

A cute kid at a gift store.

The gift store.

The signs identifying the night's guests at our ryokan.

This ryokan was just as traditional as the one in Tokyo, but much less modest. They served dinner in the room, had their own hot spring, provided robes for us, and put away the dining table and brought out the bedding at the proper time.

Dinner was fabulous.

The breakfast buffet the next morning.

We went back up the hill on the train to the Hakone Open Air Museum, which had a whimsical collection of contemporary art. We hadn't bought any incredibly cute Japanese umbrellas when it wasn't raining, and then we were forced to buy these plain ones that morning when it started raining. Pictures of the art at the Open Air Museum...

We went to another museum nearby in search of the 36 Views of Mt. Fuji by Hokusai Katsushika, but they turned out to be in a different city. Still, this museum had a really nice moss garden.

On to Kyoto