Day Trip!! Ebina - Fujigoko - Hakone

There is no better way to start the day then with freshly baked melonpan! Yama-chan our awesome guide took us to Ebina where this melon pan is sold along side with many other delicious Japanese delicacies just to buy this famous bread. He was worried that they wouldn't have cooked it yet even though when we showed up at 9am half of them were already gone.

Japanese melon bread is mouthwatering goodness in pastry form. I love this stuff, know that I didn't eat all four but I did have a bite of all of them. There are many different kinds of melon bread:

• Cantaloupe (original - I think this one is the best one) 
• Cantaloupe with chocolate chips (the one I bought)
• Honey Dew (definitely a gooder)
• Cantaloupe with melon cream inside (I can't have dairy)
• There are ones with real melon in it (yet to try)
• Pineapple (Hong Kong style)

But enough about melon bread onto the trip! First stop was Mount Fuji (Fujisan) it was a bit of a drive but the scenery itself was worth getting up super early. Obviously we didn't have time to climb the whole mountain so we drove to the half way point to climb a little bit to see the amazing view. Even the half way point was stunning beyond belief, we could see on for miles and miles and a huge sea of clouds (unkai-I hope I remembered that correctly)

Yama-chan showing us on the map where we were.

Here are some panoramas that I took when we reached the half way point! I learned tonnes of things from Yama-chan like why you always say hello (Konnichiwa) to every person you walk past. In the mountains it is easy to get lost so if someone has gone missing we can say we saw them at this point in the path because we acknowledged them with a greeting, and it is polite.

Hakone was awesome, we took the cable car (1800yen return)  up to the top and from there the lush welcoming smells sulfur. That wasn't the reason we came up here it was for onsen tamago (hot spring eggs) they are hard boiled in the springs. It is the main attraction here, the view is just a perk.

After we ate our eggs we got back  in the car where I took a nap and headed to a Shinto shrine. Where Asia and I prayed for good luck on our upcoming job search.

At Shinto Shrines in Japan you can donate money and get a fortune. After having our friend tell us ours we were told to tie them to a wall at the shrine. Mine is the one on the bottom left corner with the pink and purple. Sadly I have forgotten what my fortune told me. 

This day trip was awesome!! Thanks Yama-Chan for driving us around, I can't wait for our next day trip out with him.