If you go from Tokyo to Hakone you get to ride trains, a funicular, and a pirate ship…or more correctly a Fairytale Land Pirate Boat.

…and so of course we had to go. This requires a bit of get up and go, however, because of the rather harsh itinerary it entails. One day we get up really early, take a series of trains to Hakone, switch to the slowest train of all time to go up a mountain, transfer to a funicular, walk over to a gondola ride, and get a lift across the mountain to a lake, where we board the Fairytale Land Pirate Boat for a cruise.

The series of photos was sort of as follows:

Photo of train official in the Tokyo train station. Trains are fast and on time.

Before you board however, you should run over to a kiosk and buy a bento box in case you get hungry (even if your husband freaks out that you will miss the train. Bento boxes are good!).

Once you get off the train at Hakone, you switch to the funicular. We got to be at the front, but they wouldn’t let us drive.

Then you get off the funicular, and walk over to the gondola ride. We stopped for lunch (or whatever the meal after breakfast, and after a train bento box, but eaten before noon is called) outside the volcanic eruption part of the mountain (see photo on top of blog). It was described as: “a volcanic eruption before Christ” in the tourist literature so how could we not?

You get off the gondola and board the Fairyland Tale Pirate Boat, which takes you across Lake Ashi and drops you off on the other side. Then you are kind of left to stand there and are kind of go, “well, what next?”

Hard to believe, but the insane chain of transportation we took that morning didn’t end up being the most memorable thing from the day.

How is that possible? Well, friends, it’s possible when all those things lead you to be dropped off of a packed, careening bus at what ends up being a massive themed wonderland of an onsen resort. Hakone is known for it’s hot springs, so naturally you need to hit the pirate ship and then go to something that may or may not be one of kind in Hakone: the Japanese invention called the hot spring amusement park.

At first glance, Hakone Kowakien Yunessun looks like a old folks home (a really nice one what has gardens and fountains). Once you realize it’s what you’re looking for and make your way inside, it’s not only hot springs, but a shopping complex and no fewer than 8 restaurants, including one called Auntie Pasta.

The themed hot springs in the Yutopia area alone included a coffee bath, Japanese sake bath, The God’s Aegean Sea, Sanctuary of Water, Sol-fa Spring, BOXAPPY’s Jungle Gym (BOXAPPY being the name of the onsen’s co-mascot, which is a sponge with a face and his girlfriend (also a sponge)), Rodeo Mountain, Dead Sea Bath, Turkish Hamam, and the Wine bath (as you can see in the above photo from the Pension Sakuraya site where they have lots of great photos of Yunessun). They then had a zone called More No Yu (NAKED ZONE) which was an outdoor natural themed hot spring. Uh, so there were no personal photos from this part of the trip.

This was similar in a lot of ways to the geo-thermal spa we went to last year in Iceland (how did we turn into people who travel to hot spring spas? Anyway.) You get a bracelet and you can use it to pay for anything you want (massages, food, gifts).

And, get this: the floor guide you get when you go in states there is no entrance to those who have a tattoo on their body. Yes, apparently if youƒ?Tre an infant you can go in with a diaper (!! um, whaaaat?) but they don’t allow tattoos. I guess I don’t blame them. There’s the combination of old people and a NAKED ZONE they have to think about.