Vacation from a vacation in Hakone

After about 5 days soaking in the city that is Tokyo, we make a weekend trip out to the town of Hakone; a popular destination for city folk to get away from it all. The town is about 2 hours ride on the RomanceCar (bullet-train, kinda) and located close to Mt. Fuji. It's famous for the natural hot springs, which is basically a 24-7 sauna. I'll get to that later.

So once we get to the station, we find that our hotel is actually up the mountain, about a 40 min drive by bus. Now, if you've seen Initial D or Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift, these are the mountains that they drive on. I mean, Knight Ridder would love this road because for 30 min it'll twist and turn, back and forth, and the smallest mistake and whoop! there you go, down the mountain. So you can only imagine how much funner it is watching our teenage bus driver pretend he's canyon driving in a city bus. I think I'm the only one who appreciates it, actually.

45 min later, we finally reach our hotel, which overlooks a valley. Checking in to our room, I'm surprised to find that it is definitely not a typical room, but something out of Karate Kid II. No bed, paper walls, sliding doors, bamboo straw floor, and LCD tv. hmm, I don't remember the tv part and Mr Miyagi, but it's been a while. We change into some Japanese robes and head down to the main attraction of the hotel: the hot spring sauna.

Now for those who don't know what this is, it's basically a super-heated water pool that's naturally heated by the hot springs located underneath the hotel. Since it's always venting heat, these pools are always hot and always running, which means no one has to get up and push the button to turn on the heat every 15 min. The proper etiquette in using these saunas it to first get wash yourself off at the showers, which means you'll be in your skivies (naked). Before you say, whoa, guys and girls naked together? No, the males and females are separated and have their own saunas so no hanky-panky occurs. After about the requisite 2 min of dipping my toe in and out because the water is searing hot, I slowly get deeper and deeper until it's actually quite nice. I might like this spa thing, after all but don't tell anyone.

After the spa treatment, we head to dinner at the restaurant. Boy, talk about 10-course meal. Suffice to say, after we head back to the room, I pretty much crash out on the padded mattress on the ground. It's about 8pm, but I don't think I missed much because there really isn't much to do at night. Not even wifi is available! Blasphemy.

The next day, we check out of the hotel and head to the ropeways, or gondolas, that connect up to the sulfur vents at the top of the mountain. Apparently, it holds the Guiness record for most passenger carried via cables at 2 million last year. Well, at least we know it's safe. At the top of the mountain, which is blistery cold, btw, we make the short hike to the sulfur vents where it smells like rotten eggs and steam billows every which way. They actually tell people not stay there for more than a few minutes since sulfur is, well, actually very toxic; but heck, you can't leave without eating some of those sulfur-cooked eggs! On a side note: eating sweet potatoes is a sure-fire way to get your fiber intake and its consequences. Big time.

We head back to the train station area and we meet up with my classmate, Kaz, who coincidentally recently moved back to Japan after 9 yrs of working in the US. He have an early dinner at a nearby restaurant, and he gives me the lowdown on business culture in Japan vs the US. For instance:
- Most corporate workers work Mon-Sat, 10-12 hrs a day!
- No such thing as business casual, unless it means suit and tie
- Every night, the workers usually go to a bar for drinks after work which you cannot decline; else you will be ostracized and ridiculed
- Japanese companies are trying to mimic western styles for business, but are having a hard time changing cultures because of "old school" mentality. As a result, they are declining in profits and market share to Korean and Chinese companies, but don't know how to react.
- A lot of companies actually don't like MBAs...they rather train their own employees and not bring outside perspectives.

After a tearful farewell, Les and I head back to Tokyo. Although I was a little weary of coming here, it was actually a nice change of pace from the glitz and glamour and traffic and dense population of the big city. The only thing missing was the castle at the end for the big fight scene between Daniel-san and the evil nephew.