Today we went to Edo Wonderland which is a Japanese themed old town. The connections to get there didn't start early enough for our liking so we caught a very expensive taxi, $60 for a 20 min trip! But it was well worth it as we got in to the first Ninja Show which was pretty cool. We also saw a water magic show and a geisha show. At the geisha show I suggested we sit up the back in case it was boring and we wanted to slip out, but Steve wanted to sit up the front. And he sure did regret that because he was picked out of the audience and made star of the show 😂 We had no idea what was going on because the whole thing was in Japanese but it had something to do with him dining with a geisha. Everyone kept laughing so whatever the guy was saying (and making Steve say in Japanese) must have been funny. At the end he was given a gift, geisha face paint 😄 There were other shows too but we didn't bother to see them as they are all in Japanese. Actually the whole place was in Japanese with very little English, even the staff could barely speak a word of English! But we had fun anyway, the boys loved the maze, sideways house, trick house, ninja star throwing and haunted house. There wasn't a real lot of tourists there and only a handful of westerners. There were lots of school children on an excursion and they were really cute and so well behaved! Charlie wanted to stay longer but we had a long commute to Hakone so we left at 2.
From Edo Wonderland we took a bus to Nikko, train to Utsanomia, bullet train to Tokyo, bullet train to Odawara, train to Hakone and then finally a train to Gora. We finally arrived at 8pm and checked into our hotel, Hakone Terraces. Google maps said it was a 13 min walk from the train station, it didn't mention that it was up a steep hill. We then did a quick run to the supermarket for supplies and have finally settled in at 9.30. We are exhausted 😥
