hello tokyo bye bye osaka

Day 6: Cablecar - Ropeway - Pirate Ship - Hakone-machi - Pola Museum - Gotemba Premium Outlet - Onsen

To compensate for our extravagant dinner the night before, the noodles we bought from Lawson ends up being our breakfast. So much for living it up!

Our first stop for the day was Gora Park. We hiked all the way up from the station to get there only to later realise we could of caught a free bus. Typical! Gora Park was underwelming, I almost wanted to tell the people who were heading there to take a u-turn because it wasn't worth seeing. The pictures on the paper given to me when I entered Gora Park were much more vibrant than the photographs I came away with. I'm sure this was largely due to the cold weather Hakone was experiencing. 

Today was the day we chose to do all the touristy activities. And today was also the most worst possible weather you of could imagine to do a day trip in Hakone. We experienced the trifecta: cold, wind and rain.

Most of the scenery I saw were of hundreds of water droplets on the frosted glasses of the cable cars and ropeways. Whatever pretty scenery there was, it was all lost on me. 

Even the pirate ship was disastrous! I couldn't see that lovely fuji-san background or torii gates I was hoping for. Instead most of the tourists decided to just stay inside the ship. But for the brave few souls, like myself who ventured out on the decks, all that I could make out were ghostly silhouettes of mountains. Ironically, my only views of Mt Fuji ended up being from my hotel window in Tokyo.

When we arrived in Hakone-Machi, the weather got even worst. My friend and I decided to escape back to our hotel to have a nice lunch and more cake from our new favourite bakery. This was enough to get us re-energised and prepare us for Phase Two of the day.

The Pola Musuem was our next stop. Of all the places, I was definitely not expecting to see the famous "Water Lily Pond" painting by Claude Monet here, so I was pleasantly surprised.

After this we decided to check out the Gotemba Premium Outlet and well, I guess they called it "premium" for a reason. There were suppose to be great views of Mt Fuji from this outlet too, but as usual I don't see any. Instead all that I remember vividly was getting hammered by the wind and rain.

One of my most lowest points on the entire Japan trip was walking across the bridge that connects the west and east zone of Gotemba. This was where my umbrella snapped and it was also where I experienced a "moment."  I think, we all at one point experience these "moments" when we're really far away from home. For me, the umbrella incident made me feel really homesick. 

The "moment" however, was fleeting as I ended up trashing my old umbrella in the ladies toilets and buying another one. Buying an umbrella proved to be much harder than I thought because my options were limited to stuff like frills, lace and other girly embellishments and patterns when all I really wanted was something simple. 

After opening my umbrella for the first time, my friend and I both study it for a second before bursting into laughters. My umbrella looks like something that came off the set of the My Fair Lady movie (which FYI is totally not my style).

When we finally arrived back at the hotel, it was really late but I was still looking forward to having my first onsen experience. I had already chickened out earlier from doing the public onsen which was why I ended up paying for a private onsen experience. The experience ended up being amazing and it felt really good to finish the day on a high note.