Today was meant to be a very full day, but ‘best laid plans of mice and me ….’ and all that, meant that it was quite a quiet day. The plan had been to get the train from Shinjuku to Odawara and that part went well. In fact that part went like clockwork – the train left exactly when it was meant to and it arrived exactly when it was meant to. It turns out that this is possible and happens in Japan all the time! In fact they even cleaned the train while we were waiting to board – who knew that clean trains were possible as well …. The train came in and, as we waited to get on, we watched as the seats turned around to face the other way all on their own – spooky …. It did mean though that we were all facing forwards for the train journey which was nice.
The next part didn’t go quite as well. We were supposed to be going on a cable car up Mount Hakone followed by a cruise on Lake Ashi to our hotel, but overnight storms and high winds meant that neither boats or cable cars would have been a good idea! So the coach took us all the way to the hotel on the banks of Lake Ashi in Hakone instead ….. Plan B was a visit to the Hakone checkpoint museum. In the Edo period the Hakone mountains formed a natural barrier and Tōkaidō road (which means “eastern sea route,”) was the most important of the Five Routes of the Edo period. The Tōkaidō road connected Kyoto to Edo (modern Tokyo) and the checkpoint was a method of control of the route. The current museum is a reconstruction of much of the original structure and illustrates the life of the soldiers and others who manned it.
