Author of the Hiro Hattori (Shinobi) mysteries
Ashinoko (Lake Ashi) in Hakone, is one of my favorite places in Japan. The area is a major tourist attraction (with good reason), but it’s also an excellent place to walk, and hike, and climb–and shoot photos.
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In late April, I headed south to Hakone for a repeat hike of the Ashinoko (Lake Ashi) West Bank Hiking Course. I hiked this trail last spring, too–and although this year I was too late for the sakura (cherry blossoms), any day you can see Mt. Fuji from the trail is an excellent day to hike.
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This week, I’m blogging at Murder is Everywhere – and sharing a modern twist on an ancient Japanese rite of spring.
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A virtual hike along Hakone’s “Old Road” from the beautiful pond called Otama-ga-Ike to one of Japan’s oldest continuously operating teahouses.
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In June (2021), I used one of the last pleasant days before the rainy season set in to hike a section of the Hakone Old Road between Ashinoko (Lake Ashi) and Harajuku, with a short detour to a lesser known pond called Otamaga-ike along the way.
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Later this week, I’ll share a recent hike I took along a preserved section of the Tokaidō–one of the major travel roads of 17th century Japan–but the day began with a walk along a different, and more modern, path along the shore of Ashinoko (Lake Ashi), which I’m sharing here today
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Earlier this month, I took advantage of a sunny Sunday and headed out to hike another “new-to-me” trail in Hakone: Marudake (1,154 m) via Otome-Toge. As always, the hike information is at the bottom of the post. I caught the highway bus from Shinjuku to Otome-toge; the route goes through Gotemba–where I caught a great view of Mt. Fuji–always an excellent way to start the day. I’ve hiked the first part of this trail several times, and the view from the Otome-toge bus stop is one of the best anywhere when Fuji is in a cooperative mood. She was a
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In late April, I headed south by shinkansen for a hike I hadn’t done before: the Ashinoko West Bank Walking Course, which (unsurprisingly) follows the western bank of Lake Ashi from Hakonemachi to Togendai.
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Yesterday saw the addition of three more peaks to my #100Summits list, thanks to a traverse of two peaks and a gondola-assisted climb of a third in the Hakone area. While I’ll give more details about the later two climbs in the weeks to come, today I’m sharing a little about the first, which also involved research for my next Hiro Hattori mystery (the first one to involve a ghost).
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Today we continue the virtual tour of Hakone Shrine with a trip to the water gate. In the Shintō faith, torii (the red-orange gate in the images) mark the boundary between the secular and the sacred – though on occasion, it often seems that the areas on both sides of the torii are equally sacred. The water gate at Hakone Shrine is one of those places.
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