Today was an early start of 7am to meet our tour at Shinjuku I-Land, at the Love statue in the business park by 7.50am. Two taxis took us there without a hitch (because I asked hotel staff to tell them once again where we needed to go). A block from our destination our cab driver caught on to our accent and started chatting in English to us!

Our lovely tour guide called Mao boarded 40 of us onto a coach for the two hour drive to Mount Fuji. Thankfully the skies were clear and we were able to go to the 5th station. We were not as thankful when we stepped out into the minus 3 degrees temperature – it was literally breathtaking!

Mao promised us excellent coffee there and a delicious snack in the shape of Mt Fuji, but the pipes were frozen so no coffee could be made and the toilets couldn’t flush 😬

Our coach then drove us to a Ninja Village for a Japanese hotpot/ all-you-can-eat buffet lunch. We learned there it doesn’t pay to be polite – we sat back and waited while others on the tour dove in and filled their plates, and as a result missed out on some of the smorgasbord items. We still had plenty to eat though, and walked it off in the Japanese garden next door.

Back on the coach, we continued on to the Hakone area, starting in “Owakudani” a valley once called “Valley of Hell.” This active volcano (it last erupted in 2015 and erupts every 30 years) area smells strongly of sulphur, and is famous also for its black eggs.

We then took the Hakone Rope, or cable car, down the mountain with an amazing view of Mt. Hakone.

This trip landed us at Lake Ashi, a caldera lake, where we boarded a 30 minute cruise. There has been a variety of transport involved in today’s activities!

Back on the coach, we continued on to Hakone Shrine, one of the most famous shrines in the area because of its photogenic red torii gate floating on the water called “Torii of Peace.”

Our guide gave us an interesting lesson on Japanese religions – Shintoism or Buddhism (and she said they are Christians for one day of the year, Christmas Day, so they can celebrate that season and enjoy KFC, where they book in one month in advance to make sure they can eat it on 25 December). She told us that overall Japenese are not really religious but they do like their customs and superstitions.

The path to the shrine had 89 steps, which is a number for bad luck in Japan. She encouraged us to wash our hands at the purification station at the bottom, then climb the 89 steps, counting them as we went. This would then get rid of bad luck for us, and if we drank from the 9-headed dragon spring water after visiting the shrine, we would have good luck 😉

Our coach then dropped us to Odawara station to get a bullet train back to Shinjuku. We could have caught the coach back, but Mao said that could take 2-3 hours due to traffic, whereas the bullet train would take less than an hour.

Once the bullet train arrived in Tokyo, we were supposed to find a transfer gate to change trains for Shinjuku. Of course, I went out the wrong gate at Tokyo station and it swallowed our tickets before our final destination 😬

So while there we decided to find dinner and souvenirs. We found a delicious German restaurant in a restaurant precinct with a dozen or more restaurants to choose from, where everyone enjoyed pasta and pizza. Sam declared it was the best pasta he’d ever had. I declared that if there were such choices at train stations for our evening meals, I may have continued working in the city and rarely bothered cooking dinner 😎

We then had to navigate our way through to Shinjuku station, and then on a separate railway line to our local station, Akebonobashi. Shinjuku is the busiest train station in the whole of Japan and has 100 different exits 😬 so it took us a while and many long walks to find our way, but we made it! Ross and I decided if we were here for a couple of weeks we would learn our way around the local train system, but we would have to be in Japan for months or years to properly understand it further afield.

We encouraged the kids to turn in early for yet another big day tomorrow 😉