Yesterday we woke up at 6:30am to begin our Hakone day trip. Hakone is a small town 100km away from Tokyo. We heard it was really busy there so we decided to take the 8:30am train to Odawara, where we switched trains and got on to a train bound for Hakone. When we got to Hakone we got in line for the bus, it was a really long line but it moved quickly. The bus didn’t make Denise feel good so we got off one stop before our stop and walked. The main reasons people came to Hakone were to look at Mt.Fuji, go to the Hakone Open Air Museum (more on that later), and go to onsen. Also, when going to Hakone you have to take 8 modes of transport, 3 trains, 1 bus, 1 ferry, 2 ropeways, and a San Francisco style cable car. When we got to the ferry dock we had some snacks and tried to take some photos of Fuji-san (Mt. Fuji) but this stupid cloud was blocking it. 😭This is the ferry that we took to get from the dock to the 1st ropeway. It was a pirate-ship style ferry and it was cool. We wanted to go on their new ferry, the Queen Ashinoko, but it was going to take another 20 minutes in line so we just went for the pirate ship ferry. The day before we had bought “Hakone Freepasses”. That gave us unlimited access to all modes of transport in Hakone for 1 day. It was definitely a good deal. Before we got on the ferry we went to a Fuji-san observation building, luckily by then the cloud had moved on. We learned that Fuji was the 35th tallest peak in the world by topographic prominence Link, the tallest peak in Japan, the 2nd tallest peak of an island in Asia, and the 7th tallest peak of an island in the world. This is a cool video of Fuji, it shows the views of Fuji from an airplane and a Shinkansen (bullet train).Link. Fuji is 3,776 metres tall. The last time Fuji erupted was December 16th, 1707. Even though it was in 1707 Fuji is still considered an active volcano. Scientists are worried that the 2011 Tohoku earthquake might have caused some disruption in Fuji. But we were 60km away so we didn’t worry. Here’s another photo of Fuji-san from the Fuji observation building. We heard that Fuji has snow on it 5 months of the year. Fuji is so tall but also so wide. Fuji has a base diameter of almost 50km. A 2004 Japanese government simulation said that in the worst-case scenario, a major eruption of Fuji would cause 2.5 trillion yen in damage. 2.5 trillion yen is $30,162,500,000 Canadian. That is a lot of money!After we got off the ferry we waited in line to get on the 1st ropeway. This is Fuji from the 2nd ropeway. It is hard to see Fuji because there was a lot of dust in the air from the sulfur hells below us. The sulfur hells are natural hot springs that can reach over 100 degrees Celsius. There is a lot of steam and bits of sulfur rising when the wind blows.Here is us at the ropeway station. The Hakone ropeway opened on April 2, 1959. My mom and Cleo’s birthday! We got a green tea from a vending machine, looked at the hells and then got in line for the 2nd ropeway. This is the 2nd ropeway. It was really fun going over the hells. Can you spot the man down in the hells? After the 2nd ropeway we got on the cable car that took us to Gora station where we ran to the Hakone Open Air Museum.The reason we ran was because last admission was at 4:30, it was 4:22, and the museum was almost a kilometer away. Luckily we made it and we started to look at different statues. The museum had a big collection of statues made from a lot of different artists including Henry Moore. There were a lot of really cool statues in the museum. Unfortunately I can’t remember the artist of this one but the name of it is “Leaves on Head”. I really like this one. It reminds me of the earth god in the movie Moana.  Here are some more statues in the museum, it was great that the museum was outside because you could run around. There were so many cool statues to check out. This is a cool statue that we saw while walking through the museum. I really like this statue. Unfortunately I forget the name and the sculptor, too bad. I like how colourful it is.

This is a big tower with stained glass walls. It’s really cool walking through it and at the top you get a great view of the museum grounds. It looked really cool from the outside but even better from the inside.This is a photo of a sculpture called Woods of Net. It was a kid play structure and you could climb up through the nets to the top. The artist of this sculpture is Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam. It was really fun swinging around on the ball swings.This is another kid play sculpture that was unfortunately closed. It was shaped like a honeycomb and it was kind of like a maze to get to the top. The artist who sculpted and designed this one is named Peter Jon Pearce. It looked really fun but it was closed so we couldn’t play on it.😢This is Denise hiding in Woods of Net. There were little holes you went in and then you went through another hole and then climbed up to another hole and then you were at the top.I loved bouncing around on Woods of Net. When the museum closed we took the train back to Hakone Station, then we took another train to Odawara, then we took another train back to Shinjuku in central Tokyo. We took the Keio New Line from Shinjuku to our station, Hatsudai. Then we had a dinner of yakisoba.