Sightseeing

In Japan, I visited two famous tourist spots. One is called Hakone 箱根, formerly a national park owned by the royal family and now a holiday resort for both Japanese and foreign tourists. The park, embedded in a big forest with artificial planted pine trees, surrounded a beautiful lagoon called 蘆之湖 where Grace and I could get on board and enjoy a light breeze of autumn (you can see the scenery from the pictures next to this entry). The sea cruise took us only 15 minutes to travel from one side of the lake to another and we could overlook the day view of Mt. Fuji. According to the local people, it's hard to see the full view of Mt. Fuji as it was usually covered by rain or 'thick' cloud almost throughout the year. If one can see the full view of Mt. Fuji, he or she must be very lucky on that day. Actually, on the second day of our visit, I could see the full view of Fuji from a shopping outlet called Gotemba located at the bottom of Mt. Fuji. I thought I was lucky on that day!

The second place I visited was called 'Kyoto gate side' which was very near the Hakone lagoon. In the old days of Japan (around 1600 - 1700), there were two tribes of people who were governed by two big military leaders. As these leaders conquered their own lands and properties, they designated their own borderlines near the centre of Tokyo, today's Hakone. People, living at the east of the gate, were called 關東人 and those living at the west of the gate were called 關西人. These two groups of people could visit each other but whenever they travelled from one side to another, they had to go through what we call today 'customs' or 'checkpoints' and showed necessary identification documents. It's an interesting place!