OK, Day 2:
Michael and I get up at 7:30 am to catch our train to Hakone. (I am rather proud of myself for pulling that whole thing together.) We get ready and head out the
door to find that it is RAINING! Of all the freaking days to be crappy, NOW IS NOT THE DAY! But we already have our tickets and our hotel reserved so rain be damned, we are going! We get to the train station in Shinjuku and find our train to Hakone without much fuss. I have paid a little extra to ride in the "Romance Car" and what I have found is that Japanese folks have a TOTALLY DIFFERENT idea of what "Romance" means. Maybe the meaning got lost in the translation and what they THINK romance means is "Burning flames of hell." What else do you call a train car full of
loud drunken Japanese businessmen and 5 squealing kids? "Burning Flames of Passion?" More like "Burning Flames of Hemorrhoids." Fortunately, (there is a
fortunately here), the businessmen get off at the first stop. Now Michael is getting thirsty because we really didn't take time for breakfast. The server-lady keeps walking by us but she is too quick to grab and Michael is having difficulty yelling "Sumimasen!" So after about 45 minutes, I decide to go wrestle her to the ground to get a drink. I jump up and follow her to the back car where she keeps disappearing to. She seems a bit surprised but too bad, give me a Coke! I buy a can of Coke that is the size of the cardboard in a toilet paper roll for 200 yen. I return to Michael victorious with my toilet paper roll.
We get to Hakone about 1.5 hours later. Our first mission is to find our hotel so we can drop off our suitcases. We can't check in until 6:00pm but we can't ride around Hakone with all our worldly possessions so we see if they can store them for us until we can check in. We find our hotel without a problem and ask about check in and baggage storage. They have me sign a couple things and ask what we want for dinner, we have our choice of Chinese, Japanese, or French. Dinner? I told the travel again lady that I didn't want dinner included in our package because it was a million more dollars. But now they are giving it to us (maybe I paid for it after all...) so we decide on French food (since I need a break from Chinese and Japanese). We fill out all the necessary stuff and head back to the train station to begin our sight-seeing tour...in the fog and rain. We get on another train that seems to be going up the mountainside forever. Michael is so sick of planes, trains,
and automobiles by now, he is about to scream. So we get off at a place that has a Picasso Open Art Garden. That sounds cool, Art in the Park...We find the place
and I'm sure it is quite a sight...if you could see through the fog. Instead, we head into the store where they have all sorts of gifts and funky, cool stuff. We ohhh and ahhh at a bunch of stuff, but I just end up walking out with a tee-shirt that says "Japan" in Kanji (I have been craving a tee-shirt with Kanji on it ever since my disappointing tee-shirt experience with Hiroki). So we leave and decide to
attempt to take a few pictures in front of of the Open Art Garden place next to this huge funky water fountain. I think the pictures really captured the "essence" of our day...
From there, we caught the next train and from there, we caught the cable car that took us further up into the mountains. We got off at the top and hit a few
more souvenir shops. Pretty much, they all had the same crap so that was getting depressing. One of the last places we went to had a postcard machine that was pretty cool. It had pictures of scenery all over Hakone and you take a picture in the booth and it super-imposes your picture on the card so you look like you are standing next to Mt. Fuji. Since we couldn't get any REAL pictures, we decided to have a postcard made. Now this sounds like a simple tasks, but read on and you shall see how Tenacious C had to come to the rescue again. We climbed behind the
curtain and all I had was paper yen which the machine did not take. So Michael and I decided to pay for our souvenirs first so we had change to put in the machine. So we climbed back out and paid for our stuff and came back. I put my 500 yen piece in the machine (it cost 400 yen). The machine only takes 100 yen coins so I have to run back out and ask the sales clerk for change for my 500 yen piece. I run back to
the machine and put in the four 100 yen pieces. FINALLY!!! NOW, to create our postcard masterpiece!...OK, what is this? THE DIRECTIONS ARE WRITTEN IN KANJI!!! I poke my head out of the curtain to find a poor, unsuspecting Japanese person to come read to us..."Sumimasen. SUMIMASEN!" The old lady standing 10 feet away pretends like she can't hear me. I exit the machine ONCE AGAIN to go in search of help. I find a guy and say my usual, "Anatawa eigo ga warimas ka?" He looks at me and in plain English says, "Yeah, I speak English." KUSO! This guy is an American in a
Japanese man's body! I feel dumb..."Can you read Kanji?" "Not really" but he follows me back to the machine and another Japanese guy senses our confusion and joins us. Now we have 4 people piled behind this tiny blue curtain all trying to figure out this machine. The other Japanese guy knows enough English to assist us so we pick out what background we want and take the picture. The machine takes 60 seconds to develop the picture on screen and we have the option to try again if we don't like it. I look like Popeye with one squinted eye so I want to do it again. We hit "Cancel" and MORE Kanji pops up on the screen. Japanese man to the rescue again. He tells us what it says and presses the right button for us and we take another picture and AGAIN, I do the Popeye thing! What is up with that? So we need the Japanese guy to help again but this time, we don't have to ask because he has decided to stand right outside the curtain and wait for our pleas for help. The THIRD picture is taken and fortunately, this one is the best. Fortunately, I say, because then the computer boots you out, you only get 3 shots to get it right. We
wait 60 seconds and the machine spits out our postcard, happy to be rid of us.
I'll skip all the stories about out rides on the ropeways and sight-seeing ship because you basically already know how that went. It was just one ride after another through a thick white cloud (although that didn't stop Michael from taking pictures...)
So we get back to the hotel (after cutting our trip short...we skipped the "scenic walk" because it was already almost pitch black by that time). We make our way back to the hotel, excited to relax for an hour before dinner. We get to the front desk and the guy tells us that they made a mistake and that dinner was NOT included in our package but they kept our reservation if we want to pay. Michael says we will
just pay, that is fine. We don't feel like leaving the hotel in search of a decent meal. So we get our stuff and a cute little Japanese girl shows us to our
room...our room with two twin beds...
Could this trip possibly get any worse? That is the question that always tempts fate and I think we did just that. We take a nap, then head down to dinner.
I am laughing as I write this because it is so sad, you just have to laugh. We walk into the restaurant and the hostess seats us and hands us our menus. The menus are written in French and the only thing that I CAN read is the price...8,500 yen...gulp(roughly $85 bucks a plate.) But price is not the only issue here. We have bigger issues. We can't read the menu and the wait-staff can't speak English. The waitress struggles to understand my question of "What is this" as I point to different words on the menu. Meanwhile, a waiter decides he is going to help out and begins trying to "assist" Michael with his menu. So for the next ten
minutes, we go back and forth with our respective wait-staff and Michael is looking across the table at me like "Get me the hell out of here!" We finally end up ordering to the best of our collaborative ability and now we wait...
The first course comes and I wonder "Is this $85 bucks???" I have seen those fu-fu dinners before where you pay a million dollars and get two turds of meat on your plate with a splash of hollandaise sauce and a sprig of parsley. Was this it??? Now Michael is looking sicker by the minute because this golf-ball size serving of mystery meat is raw. But i dive in because I am starving. I have eaten raw salmon before and it is not bad. As it ends up, this raw piece of fish is covering a ball of crab meat and it is actually decent tasting (at least I think). Michael didn't like his mystery meat so I get two servings. The next course was some really lame soup with two or three tiny cubes of carrots and potatoes hiding at the bottom. Then came a VERY thin piece of fish that I THOUGHT was my main dish...good thing I filled up on bread! So I finish and feel sorry for Michael thinking they brought him the wrong thing (he doesn't care for fish but he won't let me tell the waitress to take it back) but as it turns out, that was just ANOTHER course to our 6 course meal. They finally bring out the main course but I am already full. FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE I HAVE BEEN IN JAPAN, I AM FULL! I try to eat the whole thing, but I can't. I can't even eat dessert! The waitress seems so disturbed that I turned down my dessert that she sends out a lady with the dessert on a tray anyway, just to make
ABSOLUTE sure that I don't want it. It is only a little tart about the size of the mystery meat ball appetizer but they really wanted me to eat it. But I passed and sent the jilted waitress back to the kitchen with her tart.
OK, as much fun as I am having rehashing our weekend from hell, I have to get going. Miho is cutting my hair in an hour and I have to make sure I give myself
enough time to find this place...to be continued...maybe.
Love me
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