We’ve been pretty lucky weather-wise on this trip.  We had a little rain on our second day in Kyoto, but since then, the skies have been clear.  If anything, most days we’re feeling overheated.  But today our luck ran out.  We awoke to a steady drizzle, and things went downhill from there.

Undaunted, after breakfast we headed to our first stop, the Hakone Open Air Museum.  This was an amazing place, even in the rain.  The setting (nestled into the mountains), the landscaping (precisely designed and meticulously maintained, as only the Japanese can do), and the sculpture dotting the grounds combined to make this one of the most stunning places I’ve ever visited.  It was so stunning that we decided to spent our allotted time outside in the rain, exploring the gardens, rather than retreating into the two small indoor museums on site.

It seemed that every time you turned a corner (or turned your head), you would see an interesting new view.  We particularly loved a tall stained glass tower that you could climb, with views across the park from the top.  (On a clear day we probably would have seen Mt. Fuji, but this day was definitely not clear.)  By the time we left we were pretty thoroughly wet, our sneakers sloshing with every step.  (One unfortunate aspect of this trip was that

we had our overnight bags with us, and of course those bags, and everything in them, got pretty thoroughly wet as well.)

I’m not sure exactly what we were supposed to do after the open-air museum, but I know it was supposed to be outdoors, and the Japanese hosts called an audible and decided to head to the nearby art museum instead.  The first floor contained pottery from centuries ago, and we spent way too long looking at it, not realizing the museum had three other floors.  By the time we had to leave we only had a few moments to breeze past some beautiful tapestries and painted wooden screens, and quickly check out the gift shop.  (I’m not usually much of a vacation shopper, but we’ve

seen so many unique and beautiful things here that we’ve all been buying more than we intended and are becoming very concerned about how we’ll fit everything in our suitcases — especially since we’ve also received many gifts from our generous hosts.)

At the restaurant

There was a bit of confusion about where we were going to have lunch, but we eventually headed up a very steep hill to a restaurant behind the museum, located in a beautiful garden with glass walls all around.  It was raining quite hard by now.  The restaurant was a pretty small place and we had to wait a while to get in, removing any last traces of dryness from our bodies and clothing.  But it was a delicious lunch, served with cups of hot tea that we sorely needed.

After lunch it was time to head back to the city.  We slid very, very carefully back down the wet cobblestones to the bus stop.  By this point we were in a full-blown monsoon.  The rain was pouring down and the wind was whipping it into every crevice.  Rivers ran down the street and people were shrieking as their umbrellas turned inside our and they were instantly soaked.  We all heaved a sigh of relief when the bus finally appeared.

Debbie broke the machine! After this they collected our tickets by hand.

Our trip back involved several legs, though interestingly it was a different route than we’d taken to get up.  After the bus we took a local train to the main station, and then another train back down the mountain (instead of the bus we’d taken up).  The loudspeaker on the train informed us that it had the second steepest grade in the world, and that we’d be traversing a series of switchbacks.  We weren’t sure exactly how that was supposed to work, but it was fascinating.  The train went down and across the hill for a ways, then stopped.  It then reversed course and traveled backwards down another downhill path.  It repeated this series of moves a couple more times and thus was able to zig zag back and forth down the mountain.

After two more train rides, we were finally back in west Tokyo.  (When you take a train here, you have to feed your ticket through a machine both entering and leaving the station.  Our tickets were so wet that they broke the machine.  Fortunately Japanese stations always have someone who instantly appears when any sort of problem occurs.)

Margaret and I were very happy to see Yoshie waiting for us at the station, as we were not sure about navigating the extremely complex train system on our own.  Yoshie and Misora (Debbie and Carolyn’s host) had decided to take us to dinner near the station, to what Yoshie called a “typical Japanese pub”.  This place was quite a scene.  Like many Japanese restaurants, it had tables that made it look like you were sitting on the floor (but in reality had benches that were sunken into the floor).  People were actually smoking, which was a real throwback to the eighties.  And we saw groups of partying Japanese businessmen in their suits and ties.  We got several dishes to share and sample — we generally make Yoshie order for us because the menus are too confusing.  And then finally, we were able to get home, change into dry clothes, and hang everything we were wearing or carrying up to dry.