{"id":31144,"date":"2019-12-15T18:02:08","date_gmt":"2019-12-15T10:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=31144"},"modified":"2026-03-14T14:17:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T06:17:05","slug":"15-days-in-kanagawa-hokkaido-day-04-hakone-shrine-torii-gate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2019\/12\/15\/15-days-in-kanagawa-hokkaido-day-04-hakone-shrine-torii-gate\/","title":{"rendered":"15 Days in Kanagawa & Hokkaido – Day 04 – Hakone – Hakone Shrine Torii Gate"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are two popular places to get a good view of Mt. Fuji \u2014 the 12,389-feet-tall mountain of Japan \u2014 Hakone, or Lake Kawaguchi. Both places can be included in the same trip, though most people seem to choose one or the other each trip. From what we read, one’s chances of getting a good look at the mountain are higher in Kawaguchi, and that\u2019s not considering having the lake in the foreground too. But Hakone is also regarded as the place with a lot more things to do than just gawking at that grand old lady.<\/p>\n

Our itinerary for several months now had a day visit to Hakone<\/strong> placed on Day 02, in large part because that day would be a weekday. And the general rule of thumb we\u2019ve always used is to avoid tourist hot-spots on weekends. A couple of days before departure though, the wife \u2014 whether it was through checking out weather forecasts, tea leaves, or women\u2019s intuition (?!) \u2014 said emphatically that we\u2019d need to move our Hakone day to Day 04 instead, as clear sunny skies were expected on Day 04. Fortunately, our itinerary is quite modular with little dependencies between days, though part of me still felt that getting good weather in winter was a crapshoot. There have been a lot of friends who\u2019ve visited the region surrounding Mt. Fuji hoping for good views of the mountain but ended up disappointed, as cloud layers can frequently obstruct the view.<\/p>\n

As luck turned out, the wife\u2019s homework paid great dividends. We had a gloriously clear day on Sunday today: not fully sunny, but close enough, and walked away with pictures of Mt. Fuji from two places \u2014 the Mishima Skywalk, and also while on the Hakone Ropeway.<\/p>\n

Many visitors also do either a clockwise or anti-clockwise route when visiting Hakone, and the Hakone FreePass is a must-purchase that\u2019d make getting around a whole lot easier, and that\u2019s not even counting the significant savings you\u2019d get if you totaled up the transportation costs for a normal full-day visit. Our plan was also quite ambitious: we\u2019d head to Hakone through a series of trains and buses and get to Moto-Hakone to check out the Hakone Shrine Torii Gate<\/strong>, then Mishima Skywalk, then a sightseeing cruise, then to Togendai for the Hakone Ropeway for a visit to Owakudani, followed by the Open-Air Museum and also staying for night illuminations there. The transport arrangements this visit were also made quite a bit more challenging by the recent typhoons in October this year that damaged parts of the track used by the Hakone Tozan Railway, and the Hakone Tozan cable car was also undergoing maintenance. Real bummers. Thankfully, there would be buses to ferry visitors between points covered by both of these transport systems in outage, though Japan-Guide.com warned that these replacement buses could get really crowded.<\/p>\n

Our eventual day-long trip saw us dropping the Open-Air Museum and replacing it with Gora Park, again as we\u2019d have to pack tonight for the next long segment of this trip \u2014 ten days in Hokkaido \u2014 so we figured we\u2019d need to get back to Tokyo by early evening. Our eventual path looks like this: Tokyo => Hakone through Yokohama and Odawara => Hakone Shrine Torii Gate => Moto-Hakone for breakfast => Mishima Skywalk => Sightseeing Cruise => Togendai for lunch => Hakone Ropeway => Ubako for a short trail => Owakudani Valley => Sounzan Station => Gora Park => Back to Odawara.<\/p>\n

The first post in this series of three on Hakone: the Moto-Hakone area and also the Torii Gate, the latter being one of the most photographed spots in the area. While the gate that \u2018floats\u2019 on the lake\u2019s edge is as pretty as the drab colours of winter can manage, a queue had to be formed for visitors to take their turns for photos. What I wasn\u2019t expecting \u2014 but then again why should I be surprised \u2014 was six tourists from a certain country up north that seemed completely oblivious to the people waiting for them, and who went ahead to pose in all manners of styles. Nope; these people aren\u2019t satisfied with a few shots, queue or no queue waiting for them. We didn\u2019t want to keep anyone waiting, so took under a minute to complete our turn. The young couple \u2014 locals from their accent \u2014 even seemed surprised we were done and asked if we\u2019d like help to take a family picture.<\/p>\n

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Sleepy Sunday morning at Moto Hakone. Most establishments would only open in the later part of the morning.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The famed floating Torii gate.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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It’s a short walk from the bus drop-off point to the floating Torii gate \u2014 perhaps about 8 minutes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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In and out in under a minute \u2014 took just a few pictures.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Pictures done, we walked back to the small town to look for grub, and had to make do with 7-11 \u2014 that was the only F&B establishment open at 9:45AM.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Hakone Tozan Bus pick-up to bring us to our next stop: Mishima Skywalk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We headed to the Mishima Sky Walk next<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are two popular places to get a good view of Mt. Fuji \u2014 the 12,389-feet-tall mountain of Japan \u2014 Hakone, or Lake Kawaguchi. Both places can be included in the same trip, though most people seem to choose one<\/p>\n

Read More 15 Days in Kanagawa & Hokkaido – Day 04 – Hakone – Hakone Shrine Torii Gate<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[662,608,613],"class_list":["post-31144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-kanagawa-hokkaido-japan-2019","tag-sony-a7-iii","tag-sony-fe-24-105mm-f4-0","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/blog-2019-japan-kanagawa-hokkaido-day-04-A7_02032-hakone.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38450,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31144\/revisions\/38450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}