For our first outing as a whole family, we all piled into a big tourist bus with our family name for a day trip to Mt. Fuji and Hakone.
Halfway up, we discovered that the top of Mt. Fuji was closed, so while our bus waited in a line of other buses to turn around, we got off, plated in the snow and generally made all the Chinese tourists uncomfortable. I have a great family.
From Mt. Fuji, we went to Hakone, which is a small town around Lake Ashi. For some reason, there are two pirate ships on the lake.
While crossing on one of the ships, one can get a breathtaking view of Mt. Fuji across the lake. It was also freezing cold, which was a weird sensation for someone who has spent the last year living 234 miles from the equator.
On the other side of the lake, I bought some tasty squid and some fishcakes. Kamaboko is my jam.
On the way back to Tokyo, we sopped off at the Hakone Open Air Museum (which reminded me a lot of Storm King) to explore. There were some pretty cool installations, but the crowd favorite was definitely the hot spring in the back of the museum where we dipped our bare feet among bobbing oranges.
We gave Isaac a hard time because he was late coming back from the museum.
