On the move again

We are somewhat amused at breakfast this morning as a couple of Frenchies try to explain to the waitress that they would like the continental breakfast option-good luck with that!
Today we leave Oyado for for Hakone-this requires 2 different trains-initially a primitive 2 carriage job and then my beloved shinkansen.

Fuji san from the train

We decide to rent a car in Odawara and drive to Hakone-our car rental man

keys in our hotel into the sat nav

Best to avoid nazi strongholds

which conveniently takes us 10km from our destination-thank God for google maps. The roads around here are very twisty and narrow but we arrive unscathed.
At our new lodgings we lay down the ground rules immediately: fruit and yoghurt for breakfast only!
Dinner is a delight

Lightly marbled beef

"When finished eating feel free to wash your socks in here"

Cheesecake

Suckers go to Osaka

Today we leave the fleshpots of Toyama

for the fleshpots of Osaka, the city who's motto is "eat till you drop". We stock up on some basic victuals and board our little train

World's sexiest train?

but have to change onto the Thunderbird express(the trains here have such cool  names). Osaka station was quite bewildering

but after lugging our suitcases around for 30 minutes we find the rank taxi rank and make our way to our less than splendid lodgings-the Sofitel it aint..
Our activity for tonight is finding the train station

and then making our way to our home visit with a Japanese family

-this turned out to be great evening with all that cross-cultural exchange stuff. On the way home we stopped for a snack of onikomyaki.

Tooling around Toba OR pearls before swine

Breakfast today is fruit and yoghurt-we are overjoyed but are now looked down upon as complete barbarians.
We catch the shuttle bus into Toba and visit the sights including a visit to Pearl Island, the home of Mikimoto pearls-only 50% of our group seem to be interested in the merchandise, which in my books does not register as a pass.

Mr Mikimoto in a good mood

Cheering up Mr Mikimoto

Operating instruments for oysters

We see a demonstration of deep sea traditional diving by the Ama girls which is incredibly boring-seen more impressive stuff in our backyard pool.

We visit the site of Toba castle, which would have been impressive 500 years ago.

Dinner is another elaborate affair and we cancel the last 3 courses much to the chagrin of our waitress.

A day of rest and contemplation

We have an early morning Japanese style bath in our room.

Last of the tim tams

then it is down for breakfast-this turns out to be a totally over the top affair

so we decide to rebel; we tell the waitress that from now on it is fruit and yoghurt for these 2 little gaijin.

Lunch is tempura then shocked by our own indolence we take to the road and visit the adjacent beach resplendent with plastic containers of every shape and form.

Dinner is very Japanese with ingredients which are totally alien to us.

Though not all