I don’t remember if I have visited Hakone in the past with my family, but the scenery looked so nostalgic but new at the same time when I visited with my friends this winter break.

We visited Hakone from Gotenba. We bought a 3-day tourist pass that covers most of the transportation fees like buses, cable cars, and even the ferry. Unfortunately, some of the city trains were under maintenance so we couldn’t experience that. But that’s OK.

The main iconic attraction is the lake where the ferry runs on, Lake Ashi. It brings us close to the red torii gate where you can take pictures if you’re lucky enough. Most of the time, the ferry is always full of passengers and it’s hard to take a good shot. I was unlucky since it was also extra windy that I couldn’t even hold my camera properly without shaking.

Once we landed at the Moto-Hakone pier, we immediately searched for lunch. Mind you that most of the restaurants there have their prices jacked up since it’s a tourist site. The cheapest meal we could get cost us $10 per serving. Mmmm.

From there, we decided to take a walk up to the shrine. It takes 15 minutes by foot from the pier, so it’s not a bad exercise after a meal. However, I underestimated the path there since it’s uphill and there’s a set of stairs you need to climb to get up there. I decided to go up just for the sake of going up since I’m already there. I wouldn’t go up for the second time, though. Lol.

From the shrine, we went down the same staircases, this time all the way down to where the famous torii is located. If you want to take a picture, you would have to line up for hours and our group decided it’s not worth the wait so we just took a random picture from afar.

Mishima Skywalk was our next destination. It takes around half an hour to get there by bus (also covered by the pass). It’s your typical suspension bridge, just longer. They also have zip lines and other entertainments. I’m scared of heights and I hate going fast sooo … no.

The view from the bridge, though, is majestic. My camera and skills can’t do justice. It’s really worth going there once in your lifetime. People who get dizzy and nauseated easily like me should be careful, though, since the bridge is really wobbly with all the people going through. But I would say it’s worth the experience!

On the second day of our stay, we visited Hamarikyu Gardens. I must say I had a pretty bad experience here since it had rained the day before and the paths are all muddy.

Aside from the muddy roads, the view and weather was actually very nice. The garden has a lot of tea houses floating on top of the lakes. They still use these tea houses to conduct tea ceremonies. There were a lot of tea ceremony events for foreigners to try out as well, but I wasn’t that interested so I didn’t go for it.

The garden itself was humongous. We took around one hour to go around it. Our last stop in the garden was this flower field. However, since it’s October, there weren’t a lot of flowers blooming. Most of the fields looked sad and dried up.

We then made our way to Odaiba, an artificial island that was once used for self-defense force. We took the yurikamome train to get there from Shinbashi (330 yen-ish). The train goes through the Rainbow Bridge and it looks exceptionally nice at night. We originally wanted to visit a light show exhibition but the lines were too long and we gave up. In the end, we decided to just go inside the Unko Museum (lit. Poop Museum).

Even though it’s named Unko Museum, it’s actually not a museum at all. There’s nothing much to do here other than taking pictures of poop shaped decorations and play poop themed arcade games. In my opinion, it’s not worth 1,800 yen to enter this place. But eh, it’s once in a lifetime kind of thing.

Our trip ended with a visit to this poop museum. It was anticlimactic, but the whole two days we spent to go around was fun. I would definitely go to more places and attractions in Tokyo if an opportunity arises in the future.

Last week, I visited Tokyo for the first time in 11 years. I have no recollection of what it looked like in the past, but I’m sure a lot of things have changed ever since I visited this city a decade ago.

I originally came to apply for my US Visa. I could’ve just came and gone back on the same day I applied for it, but my friend suggested that we could stay longer (and skip some classes *cough*) and enjoy the city more. And so we did.

I decided to stay at a capsule hotel for the first time in my life. I’ve always wanted to try it out since the pictures look nice in those promotional web articles. However, in reality, the hotel is really small and overly congested with visitors. There’s so little space to put your items and so little room to move around. It’s definitely not a good place to stay if you like chilling in your room for a long time since they have a mandatory checkout each day at 10 AM. It is, however, good for people who love going out and exploring and need the hotel as a place to sleep only.

We visited a lot of places on the first day including the famous Ginza Loft, Uniqlo, and Muji. There were so many things to look at and I was really tempted to buy a lot of items as well (*cough* Hobonichi *cough*). For someone who lives in the countryside part of Japan, the amount of people in Tokyo is insane.

Luckily, we visited these places on a Friday, meaning it’s not as many people compared to weekends. Even the Asakusa temple was actually visitable. I don’t remember if I actually visited this temple 11 years ago, but it still looks majestic and nice.

After visiting the temple, we went around to search for Gong Cha. Surprisingly, the number of customers at this particular branch was small so we were able to get our hands on the bubble tea quite quickly. I really recommend getting bubble tea from Gong Cha if you do visit since their tea is out of the world delicious!

I accompanied my friends on their Pokemon Go conquest after our bubble tea session. It rained really hard nearing midnight but my friend was able to catch a perfect Darkrai! We went back to our capsule hotel afterward feeling extremely drained and tired but it was a nice day spent.