08:00 wake up, the rain drops splashing on the window and the hauling of the wind don’t really welcome to a new day so I snoozed till 9 to have those problems be solved by 1 hour later future me. Somehow luckily for the rest of the day it did not rain! The only problem was a heavy mist fall later on.
09:45 ready to leave the guesthouse. It is only 12 minutes away from the Hakone Shrine, which I at least wanted a picture of. As expected it was very crowded although the weather was going wild.
You are supposed to see Mt Fuji in the background… oh well
11:00 arriving at the Hakone Checkpoint. It is said to be fully reconstructed just as it would look like before, but I am still tired and the weather was not really welcoming people to have a sightseeing trip (besides from the 500 yen entrance fee) so I skipped that one.
There exist a hiking trail from Moto Hakone to Mishima through Yamanaka but it is quite hard to find at first. It’s around 80% Forrest and 20% road. Right off after you leave Moto Hakone you have to progress slowly besides the driving cars until you reach some kind of checkpoint, a resting area for cars. From there on it gets a little bit more adventurous following the right car lane to another resting area around 500m away from the first one. But from there on out its almost only Forrest walk. The dangerous part here today was that it was so misty you could barely see cars ahead, so neither could they see you.
The second resting place has some funny looking stones
Turn into the right street after this area which should be a not so frequently used asphalt road and after around 300m you will see an entrance into the bushes
Knowing Japan the thing which I was most scared was not that there would be a masked dude with a chainsaw around the corner but that I would slip and break my legs or angles and the hazzle of communicating my situation to a doctor.
Somehow by pure chance I followed the old path to Mizushima. Best is to watch out for those signs.
I also did ask some local peoples but my Japanese is just too bad to understand anything but hat I could understand was their willingness to help and hospitality towards foreigners.
16:00 I arrived at Mishima at my landmark the Mishima Taisha and to my surprise today is accidentally the day where they held the biggest annual city festival.
20:30 I kept staying and watching here and there but eventually went to my hostel 5km to the south of Numazu.
Today was very interesting and although my feet hurt I get used to it after the first 30 minutes.
Yesterday evening I made a decision to actually not pull through with the complete tokaido trail. The 2 main reasons are that it is getting harder and harder for me to get reasonable priced lodges just to sleep over. Moreover I realized how I just rush things and not really enjoying this hike anymore. And as I realized when I hiked up Hakone or when I was in Kamakura, I do this tour for myself to actually see and enjoy things.
So for the next days I will mostly skip big city areas and concentrate on the trail part in between as well as striving around more to explore the area.
steps: 47694 ( 31.47 km)
spendings: 3060 hostel, 2200 food and drinks