Woke up to the view of a misty Mt.Fuji, (That's quite sad actually.)

Today is officially the "train my patience day". Both me and Ryan stayed up the entire night last night just to plan a perfect and smooth outing for today. Okay lah, I slept for 2 hours. But we ended up still screwing up our schedule and chased bus all over the place.

First was the unreachable location of our hotel. The bus stop is about 15 minutes walk away. And because the lady was the one that drove us to our hotel last night, we obviously didn't know the right way to walk to the station. And because of that, we missed our first bus despite waking up at 0530 and have our breakfast all done by 0700.

First bus was 0715, and we were done with breakfast and check-out by 0650. We would have been early for the bus if we didn't lost our way. :(

Breakfast time was pretty sad. We had to rush through our food just so we can leave the hotel on time. So upon finishing our food, we made a beeline to the counter and checked out almost immediately. Drop our luggages at the front desk, and we headed out straight after. But you know, the breakfast buffet is actually danggggg good(?!)

Today's buffet breakfast.


Still miss the breakfast we had at Hakone yesterday morning, LOL. I want my kaiseki breakfast and dinnerrrrr!!

We took 2 different buses to get to Owakudani. First was a straight bus back to Gotemba Station, and then a direct bus to Hakone-Togendai. We were supposed to take there ropeway to Owakudani, but the ropeway will be under maintenance until 27th June. Talk about being suay..... ~_~


Lucky enough, the station arranged a shuttle bus to Owakudani because the ropeway is down. We thought it will only take us about 15 minutes to reach, but perhaps it was a Saturday... We were trapped in a jam for 40 minutes before we reach the place.


The moment we alighted the bus, a strong pungent flew straight into our face. The smell of sulphur, fart, rotten eggs, whatever you can relate to when you smell someone-who-ate-too-many-eggs-and-garlic-at-the-same-time's fart. It was bad.... Just bad......

But we took a short stroll around the place anyway. Climbed up the craters and have a look at the volcanic ruins. The smell was extremely bad, there were kids there on a school trip(I assume), they were all covering their nose and faces because it was soooooo bad. But still bearable for both me and Ryan, hahaha. We actually kind of like to visit such places and explore nature.


Upon reaching the top, we got ourselves the famous black egg, Kurotamago @ 5 for 500JPY. The eggs were boiled in the spring water from the ruins, and it's black(I have no idea why, couldn't read Japanese), which is why it's so special! And it is EXTREMELY HOT. What's more funny about it is that, the temperature of the eggs doesn't run! It takes an extremely long time for it to cool. They were still hot even after we leave the place like 2 hours later.

We headed down back to the shops area after that and tried the eggs.
It was pretty disappointing........ Because it tasted so...... normal..... :(
I thought there will be some weird and unique taste. Apart from the taste of eggs, and probably slight sulphur smell, there's nothing much special about the eggs at all. :(


After that we got the Black Vanilla Ice Cream and try. It's slightly different from your usual vanilla. It has a slight weird herby and smoky taste, and not as sweet. And the ice cream will stain your teeth black, like squid ink, hahahaha.

Once we were done at Owakudani(12:10PM), we took a bus back down. Which is a pretty stupid idea because we actually waited 1 hour and 10 minutes for the shuttle bus. We had an alternate option, to take the ropeway down to another part of Hakone, and go back to our hotel. But we didn't, because we thought we wouldn't wait too long for the bus but NOOOOOOOOO. We ended up wasting so much time waiting and waiting. We even have to run for our buses because their buses leave right on the dot.

It was a long 2 hours trip back to the hotel. And then yet another 2 hours to Shinjuku. By the time we arrived in Shinjuku, it was 06:40+PM already.


Dropped our stuff at the hotel after checking-in, and then headed out to a nearby store for our dinner.

They have this food ordering machine in their shop, where you have to chose what you want and then pay at the machine. Then it will give you a receipt, you grab your seats and the waiter will check your receipt and give you your food. Like the Yoshinoya food ordering machines in Singapore! But this is all in Japanese..... so we actually had quite a hard time trying to understand.

But we managed to order anyway. Curry Katsu Don for me and Katsu Don for Ryan!


We took a quick stroll around the area after our dinner. Bought some drinks and japanese snacks back to the hotel for the night. Also took our laundry to the wash at the hotel lobby, at only 400JPY for 6KG worth of clothes. Drying cost 100JPY! The hotel lobby also has this relaxation corner filled with vending machines, gachapon, massage chair, computers and chilling area where you can sit and wait for your laundry. We've got ourselves not too bad a hotel(Shinjuku Washington Annex) to be honest! One night about 80SGD only!

Back at the hotel room now, getting ready for bed. Too drained from all the rushing and chasing. The itinerary for Tokyo area is much more relaxing now, so I guess we can sleep in for a little tomorrow. Hahahahaha.

Harajuku and Shibuya tomorrow if we didn't end up sleeping in for the whole day, :x

Update again!


All photos taken on Casio Exilim EX-10.