My new favorite hotel

We spend all day on the train getting from Fukuoka to Hakone. It was nice to only take two trains, and they were comfortable shinkansen trains, but leaving at 9am and arriving at 4pm is a long day.

Then we took a local train. As I looked out at the mountains and rushing river, I thought, maybe this place isn't so bad. It's rather pretty.

Then we got go our hotel.

Not too shabby.

We went inside. First they asked us to remove our shoes. No shoes in the hotel. They even cleaned the wheels of our suitcases. Then we were given our choice of yukata (robe) to wear.

Just walking around the lobby I fell in love. This wasn't just a hotel, it was a resort.  There was a Japanese bath (onsen) but it was on the top floor, open air. There were actually 7 tubs, four of them outside. After a huge buffet dinner, consisting of a wide variety of food, I headed for the bath.

I was nervous about getting a hard time about my tattoos, since they generally aren't allowed in onsen, and this hotel had several notifications posted forbidding guests with tattoos from the onsen, but it was late (the onsen is open 23 hours a day) and it was dark.

I scrubbed up, and soon found myself lying in the warm summer air, hot water swirling around me, as I stared up into the stars. It was...I don't even know how to explain. So relaxing.

I also spent some time in one of the other outside baths, which had large rocks dividing up seating areas with bubble jets that were just fabulous on one's back. I put my feet in the other baths but none could compare. I briefly popped into the sauna and misting sauna, but those two baths were far superior.

The hotel also offers foot massages, which I am now beating myself up over not paying for, and a variety of other services.

Before dinner I explored the gardens in the back.

Here fishy fishy!

Sleepy ducky

All of us in our yukata