Hakone and Bath-Time Fun

Hey. I'm back. Two days later than I promised, but whatever. No complaining on your part.

So let's see. I already talked a little with my parents and sister about my trip to Hakone, and I'm sorry to say that I don't really feel like writing a ton about it right now. I will post a couple pictures, though, and say a few things about it, so you should feel lucky (whoever you are).



Alright. First off, here's the sign at the station. The station was pretty cool because it was extremely country. Actually, on the second day of the trip I went to a station that was so country that they didn't even have an electronic ticket-taking machine. Instead you just handed the ticket to a guy standing there. That was cool. But since it was so far in the countryside, the stations didn't have heated waiting rooms and the trains didn't come very often, so we spent sufficient time freezing our butts off while waiting for the trains.



One of the train trips was to get us to an outlet mall where we got this view of Mt. Fuji. Cool, right? Speaking of the outlet mall, that was the classiest outlet mall I have ever been to in my life. I mean, at one point I saw Banana Republic and thought it was out of place because the rest of the stores were just that ridiculously expensive. Now that I think about it, I'm going pretty much in order because that was day one. Night one was at a simple Japanese-style hotel, which was pretty cool. Sorry I don't have a picture. Use your imagination or something. Alright, on to day 2.


Yep. We rode a ship that was designed to look like a pirate ship. It was pretty fun, and much nicer than riding the bus, on which I got extremely carsick. Driving along tiny, winding mountain roads on a bus is not fun. But riding on a pirate ship is fun :) After the pirate ship took us on a tour of the lake, we got on a rope way? Is that what you call it in English? Because that's what you call it in Japanese, using English words, so I feel like that's what it should be called in English. But yeah, from the ski-lift type "rope way" as I'm going to stubbornly call it, we had an awesome view of Mt. Fuji again, which was nice.

The second night was a completely pimped-out Japanese and Western hybrid hotel room which completely rocked. I wish I could have stayed there forever. It had two giant HD televisions, its own Japanese-style bath, a giant, classy bathroom, a Japanese-style sitting room... pretty much anything you can think of. Completely awesome. Then the next day we left and came home. All in all a good trip, and a great way to relax after the end of the semester craziness.


There's me not wanting to go home. Haha. But of course, I'm doing pretty well with my host family right now, too! The other day I got to read two of the books that I bought my host kids to them before bed. (On a side note, I remembered how awesome Dr. Seuss is. I mean, I think I enjoyed the books more than the little kids did.) After I finished reading the English books to Jion and Aoi, they took me down to the family bedroom (lol) and picked out a couple Japanese books and read them to me. It was really cute. Jion also told me that I had to stay with their family forever, so I lied and told him okay. He probably doesn't understand how long forever is anyways, and 5 months is pretty much forever anyways, right?

Alright, now for my funny story of the day. I saved it for last to keep you reading. First, background info: there are a bunch of toys in buckets around the bath because the kids like to play with the toys in the bath. They are squirt-guns, ships, etc. Because of this, it takes a lot of convincing to get the children out of the tub... but that doesn't have anything to do with this story. Sorry.

Okay, so yesterday I had just gotten out of the tub and put on my pajamas when Jion came in the bathroom to get his toothbrush. He walked over to the tub area, looked in, then turned and looked at me with a suspicious look in his eyes. I had no idea what he was doing until I noticed that the toys were still all over the bath area. Normally when I take a bath, if there are any toys out I pick them up for the little kids. Because I didn't pick them up this time, he accused me of playing with the toys in the tub. Unsure of how to deny it properly, I decided to play along and asked him how he knew. He told me he noticed that I had moved some of the toys, which I didn't, but I agreed. He seemed pleased to know that I also liked playing with the toys in the tub. He then told me it was okay for me to use them, so that's a plus.

And again today after I took me a bath he told me he knew that I played with the toys, and I told him to keep it a secret. I've honestly never giggled to myself so much in my life.

Well, that's all for tonight. Maybe tomorrow? Probably not. But soon!