Day 19

I still woke up really early this morning, probably about 5.30am. I refused to get out of bed until 6.30 though and it was a luxury to just lounge around. We weren't leaving until 9am so we all went to breakfast about 7.30am.
 
Breakfast was a buffet, thank god, and I was delighted to find real pineapple and granola and pancakes! I also had a cup of tea, it wasn't quite English Breakfast, but it was refreshing all the same.
On the coach again we drove to the cable car station. Unfortunately, it had closed because of strong winds. No matter, Yoko explained that we could just rearrange our schedule. And so we moved down to Lake Ashi to take a cruise on a pirate ship.
 
We thought Yoko was joking when she said pirate ship. She really wasn't! We all piled on to a good ole Jolly Roger, I was concerned originally as the sails weren't down.. soon we were off though. It was beginning to cloud over but we still had some fantastic views of the Lake and surrounding mountains.
 
We stopped off at Hakone Shrine. It was beautiful, smaller than the one yesterday but with a lot more steps! There were multiple Torii gates all in a row, going from the sea upwards. As we'd seen the sea one from the boat, it was good to see it from land side.
 
The coaches met us at the car park and we were glad to hear that the cable car station was up and running again. Mt. Komagatake was 1327m above sea level and the ride was 7mins to the top. The first car was full to the brim, and I'm glad we took the second with fewer of us squeezed in.
 
The view from the top would have been amazing on a clear day. Being in a cloud, surrounded by clouds on a cloudy day, this was unfortunately not the case for us. We had a great laugh though pretending we could see Mt Fuji in the distance. We did manage to find the shrine and a rock garden at the top.
 
I made my way down to the cable car and took the 13.10 down. Amazingly, beneath the clouds the sun had started to break through and we could see the city and the Lake laid out below. It was warm back at the base station and I was hungry.
 
I'd managed to lose the others in the fog and they hadn't been on the same cable car. I went for a quick shop in one of the craft shops. Here I found wooden secret boxes (like on the HSBC advert). I was so tempted to buy one, but in the end settled on a magic trick box instead.. at least I can't be locked out of that!
 
On the way out, I found Emily and we visited the big bazaar. I didn't buy anything but I loved looking at all of the tat! I was really hungry now so we made our way to the Prince Café. There was quite a long queue and with all of us eating in the same place, they'd ran out of chips.
 
Ever the drama queen, I'd finally ordered my chicken nuggets when I came over all funny. I tried to take my change and my orange juice but, next thing I knew, I was on the floor. Bloody typical. The good thing that came out of this was a fellow Guide gave me some mints and the café provided a bag of ice - which I got to eat/drink!
 
Back on the bus I decided to sleep on the way back to the hotel. I'm not sure if I was too hot, too hungry or just dehydrated but I felt much better once I'd finished my ice. We weren't meeting for dinner until 6.30pm so we had plenty of time to chill out.
 
Now, if you'd have told me three weeks ago that I would have enjoyed an Onsen public bath, I'd have told you where to go. Today though, Monday 10th August at about 5pm, I braved it. The concept seemed so odd to me, you weren't even allowed to take in a towel to cover up. However, about 1min after entering all of my inhibitions washed away in the boiling hot water. It was very relaxing.
 
We all dressed up for dinner in our kimonos. Ours were a lovely blue with a blue and white stripey belt. I think we all looked very fetching and when we went to dinner it was surreal to see everyone dressed traditionally. I was hoping that dinner would be slightly different tonight, but it wasn't. I did eat more than yesterday though, which I'm counting as a success.
 
There has been something I've been wanting to do since we arrived in Japan. It may sound odd, but I was determined to press all of the buttons on the toilet. Me and Rachel were in stitches trying to work out how to get the 'bidet' and 'spray' options to work. I accidentally pressed the maintenance button and we were worried the while thing would go. Luckily it didn't, and I soon realised you had to sit on the toilet to make the buttons work.
 
To finish the evening off, we watched Japanese television. It was very odd to say the least, with lots of strange adverts and songs about burgers. We have a longer day tomorrow so I'm hoping to have more sleep than last night.

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