17 amazing days we spent in Japan (Even if everything went wrong!)

Day 13 - Hakone

So we passed out after all the traveling and somehow knocked my wall tap out of the power outlet in our sleep, meaning our devices didn't charge, which totally screwed us over I had pre-purchased tickets to Yunessun, a famous hot spring theme park, so we made the trip over to the famous mountain and hot spring town of Hakone. My huge mistake here was taking the advice of Google Maps and trying to navigate ourselves to Hakone via the cheaper / slower trains instead of the tried-and-true Odakyu RomanceCar. According to Google Maps, it would be just a couple minutes more, and save hella cash. In real life, NOPE. We got painfully lost and turned around left and right until we ended up on one of the last possible time slots for doing the Hakone Round Course Tour. :(

Once we reached the scenic areas, our phones and pocket wifi all completely hit their limit at about the same time. We reached for the trusty powerbank and that's when we discovered that 1) it was dead and 2) no one up there sells powerbanks, or will let you use a power outlet. Yikes! I was pretty confident I could get us where we needed to go by reading signs and being sensible about it, but my husband was 100% panicked at not being connected or having navigation, and we were forced to rush through to the end.

We ended up not making it to Lake Ashi soon enough to catch the pirate boats that would help us complete the Round Course, so we just grabbed a bus back to Odawara Station and (having learned my damn lesson) took the Romancecar home. We used a cafe in the station to grab snacks for the train ride and recharge our devices a bit. It was late, so we knew making it to Yunessun was out of the question. :( Worst day of the trip. Still saw gorgeous views of Fuji-san, though, and I like to think it was worth the madness!

In an ideal world, one would go to Hakone bright and early, do the Round Course, hit up either Yunessun or a local ryokan for a hot spring experience, and then either stay in Hakone or return to Tokyo. 

#Hakone #Fuji #Onsen #OdakyuRomancecar #HakoneLoop #HakoneRoundCourse