Hakone

We were lucky to get our own private tour of Odawara/Hakone last weekend. One of Alex's colleagues lives there and showed us around. It's about a 1.5-hour train ride from Tokyo, close to Mt. Fuji. This place was absolutely breathtaking and it was great to get away from the busy streets of Tokyo and see so much green!

We went to the Odawara castle which was awesome! It used to be inhabited by samuri long ago. The views from the top were beautiful. It's right by the ocean so you could feel the sea breeze. Plus there were people dressed like ninjas, so that was cool haha.

After the castle, we drove for about 45 minutes up to Hakone. Hakone is known for their onsens (spa pools) and a place where rich people vacation during the summer. If you ever come to Japan, you need to go here! It's up in the mountains and looked like a magical fairytale land. Normally, you are able to see Mt. Fuji across a beautiful lake, but it was SO foggy, we couldn't even see 10 feet in front of us. Kind of a bummer not to see the lake and Mt. Fuji on a clear day, but the fog made the place majestic. We went to a shrine (in the middle of the mountains) which was awesome. There are a ton of red bridges and torii (those big red gates) which obviously I loved taking pictures of. We also had some great seafood since it's right by the ocean! I'm going to miss that when I go back to Utah.

This was such a nice getaway for us and such a fun day trip! Alex's friend was so nice to take us around all day. Seriously. Japanese people are the best. I will definitely go back here again and highly recommend it!

xoxo,

kay