lush_d3m1s3

On Friday, we started the day with breakfast at Yoshinoya, then took a day trip to Hakone. Took the main loop on the Hakone Free Pass in the opposite direction of previous trips. The transit in the region is part of the attraction: There's a mountainous local train route with several switchbacks, a cable-car funicular, and a ropeway gondola up to the sulphurous hot-springs at Owakudani. We stopped there to eat some kuro tamago (hot-spring boiled eggs whose shells are turned black by the sulphurous water) and egg-flavored soft-serve and briefly stopped at the geology museum there. Then we took the ropeway on to a boat cruise across Lake Ashi, with some beautiful views of Mt. Fuji along the way. Then we returned via a very winding bus ride through the mountains, making an early stop at Amazake Chaya, a historic teahouse, for amazake (a sweet drink that is the pre-ferment for sake) and snacks. We took the local train to Odawara for dinner, and ate at Enji, which was amazing. Apparently the chef was a former Michelin honoree. The food was really tasty and creative, and they were so nice. Afterwards, we dozed on the express train back to Tokyo and somehow dragged ourselves back to the hotel.

Saturday, we had a pancake breakfast at Bills in Ginza. That restaurant has incredibly fluffy ricotta pancakes. Later in the morning, we went to Omotesando and got pastries at Amam Dacotan, a bakery I'd wanted to visit on this trip. Afterwards, we met up with Greg and Valerie, cousins we'd met at the Greenberg family reunion earlier this year (my dad's mom's branch of the family tree) who recently moved to Tokyo. Greg is the brewmaster at the brand new Ogawa Coffee Laboratory TAP : 020 at NEWoMan Mimure, a really cool food hall at Tanakawa Gateway City. (There's a small aquaponics lab. The bakery there cultivates wild yeast and mills some of their own flour.) Greg and Valerie moved to Japan recently so Greg could be the brewery's founder. They treated us to lunch and we got to taste his fantastic beer. That area features some amazing architectural design and beautiful public spaces. There's a culture museum (MoN: The Museum of Narratives), a lounge space where the tables are arranged in a gradient by size, and a roof garden with a hot and cold foot bath, the hot side heated by underlying geothermal. Afterwards we did some sightseeing in Shibuya and Yoyogi park, before a sushi dinner in Harajuku. Erica argued that if we didn't have another sushi dinner, she'd feel the trip was incomplete.

On Sunday, we did a bit more last-minute sightseeing in Akihabara and Harajuku. I intended to leave enough time for the connection from the hotel to the Narita Express to be relaxing, but accounted for only the distance to, not the confusion of, Tokyo station. Erica found this stressful. Nonetheless, made it to the platform with a few minutes to spare. My host parents came to the airport to see us off, which was very nice.

The trip home went very smoothly. Will see how we feel when we need to be awake tomorrow morning.