December 06, 2004
Relaxing in Hakone
It took us two hours standing on a packed train to get to the Hakone area. It was definitely worth it though. My friends and I headed of to a close onsen (a Japanese hot spring) with a local bus. This specific onsen had four different baths with different temperatures, three of them outdoors. It was wonderful to sit back and relax the hot spring with bubbles, feeling the cool breeze and watch the hills around where the trees were changing leaves. So beautiful and relaxing at the same time.
Hakone is famous for its fresh tofu and we decided to have some soba (a special kind of Japanese noodles) and tofu soup. Mine was full of mountain mushrooms and vegetables I’ve never seen before. It was delicious and seemed very healthy. We were lucky to get a sunny day to stroll around the small city for a while before we left for Tokyo.
