Trip 50

April 23, 2025

Today we leave Kyoto for Hakone (Odawara station). It’s a bit drizzly at times this morning, so we’ll take a taxi for the 15 minute ride to Kyoto Central train station.

Exchanging our QR code tickets we bought online for physical tickets makes it a bit easier to go thru the turnstiles and we have about an hour before we leave.

As it was taking the Shinkansen to Kyoto, your ticket indicates the car (and seat # because reservations are recommended ), so we stand trackside at the appropriate marked spot until the train arrived, 5 minutes before departure time.

Now 40 minutes or so after departure, we’ve stopped at a smaller intermediary station and as we wait, two other Shinkansen whip by, rocking our train.

It’s an overcast and foggy day on our route and the fog has settled into the densely wooded mountains. Though we may pass it, we will not see Mt Fuji today if it’s still foggy (we did see it when traveling from Tokyo to Kyoto)

As the white gloved conductors periodically go through the cars, they stop at the head of the car, where it connects to the next, face the passengers and bow, moving into the next car. When two meet in that passageway, one salutes the other.

The train arrived in Odawara precisely on time and there was about 3 minutes between arrival and departure.

As we stand on the platform, two Shinkansen whip by in a brief, but deafening, passage; it passes in seconds, the fog enveloping the train.

The station attendant comes out of the train office in preparation for the train, and salutes as it passes.

We stood on the platform for, perhaps 20 minutes waiting to get glimpses of the trains ripping through (YouTube video) the station. Waiting for our shuttle bus down below in the station, when the trains come through, the building shakes. They are awesome. As dependent as Japan is on their rail system and also subject to earthquakes, 12-15 seconds before a massive earthquake of 8.9 magnitude hit mainland Japan on the afternoon of 11 March 2011, a seismometer at Kinkazan belonging to the country’s eastern rail operator JR East sent an automatic stop signal to the Shinkansen bullet trains (all 33 of them at the time), preventing derailment.

The inspiration for the unique shape of the Shinkansen’s nose? The Kingfisher bird’s beak. The train designers had a unique problem. Due to the high speed of the train, when emerging from tunnels, it was possible to get a sonic boom as the train’s nose compressed and pushed air in front of it, creating a shockwave. Engineers noticed that the kingfisher, when diving into water to catch prey, produced very little splash. The bird’s ability to move from one medium (air) to another (water) so smoothly was due to the shape of its beak, which is long, narrow, and highly streamlined. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHBUxmAzjq1/?igsh=OWtwNTNtcDR6c2U1 (Instagram link)

It’s a 41 minute shuttle ride from Odawara to the resort in Hakone

Once thru the city, we wind uphill (hairpin turns) up the heavily wooded mountain , through patchy fog, on a two lane (sometimes barely) road (glad it’s not me driving). Had we not booked the hotel shuttle (which met us at the Odawara train station) , we’d have had to take the train to Hakone and then?? (We saw a few people rolling their suitcases on the road, uphill).

The resort is just awesome. I think this is the largest and nicest suite we’ve ever had. Shoes off as we enter our suite. A view out to the mountain; cherry tree blossoming outside our window. The resort is just that, because of its location (and without a car), mobility is limited, but why leave?