The oft-visited Kamakura-Hakone stretch isn't terribly child-friendly outside of the summer beach season. Kids get bored with temples and shrines, and wandering the omiyage streets of hot-spring towns gets pretty old, pretty fast. Luckily, there are a few spots that provide ample opportunity to play, and that will, with any luck, fill kids' "play tanks" … Continue reading Kids’ Play Between Kamakura and Hakone: Odawara Wanpaku Land
Hina Matsuri (the Doll Festival), AKA Momo-no-Sekku (the Peach Festival), AKA Girls' Day, is the day when Japanese families celebrate their daughters. I wrote about it a bit the other day in the Hina Matsuri Tsurushibina post, and I'll include the text at the bottom, too. These two dolls represent the emperor and empress at … Continue reading Hina Matsuri – What It’s All About
Living in Kamakura means we're just an hour away by car from the onsen (hot spring) area of Hakone. Boy, do we love onsen. These photos are from a few months ago when we dropped by a very empty (completely empty) hotel onsen. First, we had a private family onsen, but I was curious about … Continue reading Onsen
Just a hop, skip and a jump from the stained glass tower is a looooong foot bath with nice warm water. When we were there, it was full of bobbing lemons, limes, yuzu and other citrus fruit. The colours were glorious.
Still at the Hakone Open-Air Museum... This is a big tower made of stained glass with a spiral staircase inside. It's pretty cool.
Like I said yesterday, the Hakone Open-Air Museum has some nifty kids' areas. Well, area. (Okay, there are two, but the one is indoors and kinda not fun.) Sadly, the big rope play area has been closed. BUT, it still had this cool plastic tunnel thing. Kaede had a blast, and I was so very, … Continue reading Let’s Visit Hakone 2!
Kamakura is all well and good, but sometimes, you need a break, right? A few weeks back, we headed down to Hakone, a hot spring resort area, for the day. While there, we checked out the Hakone Open-Air Museum, as we'd heard it had a fantastic kids' area. (More on that in a future post.) … Continue reading Let’s Visit Hakone!
I told you there'd be more persimmon photos. I just can't.get.enough. These were miniature persimmons–I'd never seen such a thing! They looked almost like cherry tomatoes hanging on a vine. We came across them at the Picasso Museum in Hakone, a hot-spring area about an hour/hour-and-a-half from Kamakura.
It's not really furin season anymore, but there was a display at Kowaki-en Hotel in Hakone the other day, and it was all kinds of pretty. Kaede was pretty impressed, too.
鎌倉ペンション・Inn By The Sea Kamakura 