Trip to Hakone 2025

I can’t believe it’s been 9 years since we’ve been to Hakone. I laughed a little bit cause I found my old blog post about our ryokan and also I even wrote a Hakone trip guide (wow!) haha. But one thing hasn’t changed though - getting to Hakone is still quite a bit of work! But we were determined to bring the kids and my MIL / aunt to Hakone at some point, so we are so grateful that we made it to Hakone.

Luggage Forwarding

Luggage forwarding is so convenient in Japan, especially when you’re going to one hotel to the other. It’s usually next-day delivery if it’s a different city, so you should plan ahead. We were planning to go Hakone for 2 days, so we got our luggage sent to our next hotel after Hakone. Getting to Hakone is quite a bit of transit (multiple trains or buses etc) and the roads aren’t conducive for walking with luggage. Coin lockers can get full by midday, so it’s not really too feasible. So I highly recommend to forward your luggage to your next destination. Plus when you’re at the ryokan, most of the time you’ll be wearing a yukata, so you wouldn’t need a lot of clothes.

shinkansen tickets

For this trip, when I tried to plan it via Google Maps, it just didn’t make sense for us to go all the way to Shinjuku to take the Romancecar, which is a beautiful train that goes all the way to Hakone Yumoto station (one train less). Especially since we were travelling with my MIL and aunt, we needed to reduce the number of transfers and walking as much as possible due to their knee issues. We stayed near the Tokyo Station, so we got to the station via bus (which is also good if you can’t walk long). At Tokyo Station, we found some coin lockers and put our heavy backpacks down and started to look for some food for the train ride.

I had purchased my tickets on Smartex about a month prior to the ride, which is cheaper and also you can make reservations on time. The caveat is that you cannot be flexible with the schedule. The Tokyo Chapter suggested to arrive at least 15 minutes before on the platform of your train, and make sure you’re at your car, too, as the trains stop only for a few minutes and once you miss your train, you will have to go to the unreserved sections.

When you purchase the tickets on Smartex, you’ll get a QR code. You’ll need to look for a gate that allows QR code scanning. Most of them only take normal tickets.

For some reason, during this trip, we couldn’t find the Ekibenya Matsuri Gransta once we were in the shinkansen gates. It was really busy and we were kind of running short on time, so we couldn’t really explore. Anyway, thankfully once we got up to the 2nd floor (platform) there were some stores still selling some ekiben’s. I really wanted to get a cute one for the kids, though!

STopover at odawara

We took a really fast train from Tokyo Station to Odawara, which only took 30 minutes. We thought it would be a good spot to take a little break and also do some sight-seeing. The Odawara Castle was only about 500 meters from the station, so we decided to make the trek. Sadly, during this little stopover, Chase lost his Ikea wallet and Pasmo card. We tried to reach the lost and found but wasn’t successful. But at least this stop was really beautiful. Jasiel fell asleep, but they were able to push her up the hill to the castle because there was a wheelchair accessible path (but very steep!). Along the way we also saw the children’s park but it is closed on Mondays and we happened to have been there on a Monday.

At the Odawara castle, they also had a Ninja museum, which of course Chase wanted to go in! It was really fun - it started with a show, and then there was a room for ninja training, then we had to fight like a ninja before we could leave. It was a fun little activity but cost me more cause of course Chase wanted ninja merch. haha!

Afterwards, we headed back to Odawara station. We visited some convenience stores for some last minute purchases, as in Hakone there are very little convenience stores, or at least they are much harder to access. We took the train to Hakone Yumoto station, which took about 15 minutes. We had to transfer to another train shortly, but everybody was moving at a snail’s pace so we missed the next train. Which meant that we had to wait another 20 minutes for the next train.

Then, we took the local train to Gora Station, which took about 40 minutes. This one is a long train because of the switchbacks, as it went up in elevation by over 300 meters. Finally, after arriving at Gora station, we called our hotel to pick us up. And they arrived in less than 5 minutes! The drive to Gora Hanaougi is very steep, so I highly recommend riding the shuttle to get there.

Our friend highly recommended this ryokan, as it also accommodated children and their needs such as bedding, food, etc (most of them don’t or they will need to be 12 years old and up), so we decided to book the ryokan the moment the rooms were available, which was 6 months ahead of time. We got the Semi-Suite room as it was bigger, and it also had a private onsen (hot spring) inside the room. It was such a treat! The kids wearing the yukata’s made it so cute.

Immediately, the kids and I jumped into relaxing in the onsen. At first the kids were a bit wary about it, as the water was steaming hot. There’s a cold water faucet to help manage the water. But soon enough, they were so happy to be in it. I honestly can’t believe these little kids got to experience a ryokan and an onsen at such a young age! Clement and I were both adults and married when we got to go to one - such lucky ducklings!

At this ryokan, dinner was served in a private dining area, instead of your room, which is kinda nice actually! And especially because we had separate rooms from my MIL and aunt, so it was nice that we got to dine together.

The meal, as expected was very wonderful and well-rounded - multi-course meals featuring local and in-season ingredients, packaged with so much care and attention. For the kids, we only ordered kids meals for Chase as we expected there to be enough food for the both of them, and we ordered an additional bowl of rice to help fill up their little bellies.

It was really nice that we got to have a private room, because Jasiel kept running around and around the table. I had tried to explain to her before the dinner, but she just didn’t want to stay sitting for very long at all. She had screen time, sticker book, coloring book - but nope. I get it, it is tough for them to sit down especially at this age. Thankfully, the food was delicious and well-paced, so before we knew it, dinner was over and we headed back to the room for much-needed rest after a long day of travel. Of course, we hit the onsen a few times!

The next morning

Started our morning bright and early with sunshine shining through, and we had an incredible mountain view. Felt so blessed that we could come here and enjoy God’s beautiful creation. Of course, we started the morning with some onsen dips, and the kids enjoyed listening to the sound of the birds and the wind blowing through the leaves. The kids were a bit hungry, so good thing I had brought some cup noodles from the convenience stores and juice, so they had that for breakfast before we had our official breakfast at 9 (you get to pick the start of your meals from a range of times). Since we were only planning to do some light sight-seeing that day, we didn’t mind a leisure start to the day.

As expected, our breakfast was delicious! Japanese breakfasts are very well-rounded and balanced, so different from the quick, fast-food style of breakfasts. I wish I had enough time to make my kids fancy breakfasts haha.

After breakfast, we took the shuttle to Gora Station, and walked around the area. There’s not too much to see right from the get-go, but we found a little coffe shop called Coffee Camp and got ourselves a drink!

Then we took the “cable car” which really is a train going up the mountain, all the way to Sounzan Station. This is also where we bid goodbye to my MIL / aunt as they weren’t too comfortable going up the elevation even further.

Then, we took the Hakone Ropeway up to Owakudani. Most people take it all the way to Lake Ashi and take the ship, but because we were taking it easy, we were just going to check out this area. The view of the volcanic valley was as beautiful as I remembered! It was a bit cloudier at this point, but we could still see a bit of Mt. Fuji, which I thought was really cool. I remember it being rather stinky up here, but this time around it was so windy, so we didn’t quite smell it.

At the Owakudani Station, we set off to explore the area a bit. There’s a few things to see, including a small museum, ice cream (which of course the kids wanted), and it was almost time for lunch, so we grabbed lunch at this station that overlooked the valley. It was stunning!

Then, we headed back to Sounzan station, which is actually a 5-10 minute downhill walk back to our ryokan. We didn’t just walk up here earlier, because it would’ve been uphill. Jasiel fell asleep on this walk back and slept on me for a good hour and a half :) it was so sweet because normally she doesn’t nap on me often anymore so it was really sweet that we got to do that. If you stare closely, you’ll notice she actually fell asleep on a bag of fruit jellies that she picked. She refused to let go of it before the nap, and it was in too deep for me to remove it by the time she fell asleep. Haha!

Back at the ryokan, we enjoyed a relaxing dip in the onsen. This time around we didn’t end up visiting the public ones in the ryokan, but that was okay. It was really special that we got to do this as a family.

For dinner, our food courses were different from the previous day, which we thought was really amazing that they would change it even! I talked to Jasiel a lot before the dinner, and for some reason I think she really did understand it better this time, and didn’t really leave the table as much. The night before, we had some grilled beef, and the second night we had shabu shabu. I think this was the first time we had a traditional shabu-shabu, and the broth was truly light and filled with umami. I loved it! And oh, I picked up this Owakudani keychain from the station office, I thought it was so cool because it wrote the elevation!

Ended our night with more relaxing onsen time - I loved that we could do this as a family. What a blessing!

our last day

I had also pre-booked our shinkansen tickets heading back to Tokyo from Odawara, so we had to be in Odawara by around noon. After speaking with our family, they wanted to check out Odawara station more than the Hakone Yumoto station, so we had a slightly earlier breakfast, took some quick photos before we headed back to Odawara station.

Seeing the kids look so cute wearing yukatas, I was inspired to get the kids a set of yukatas - I guess I’ll have to look for it when I get back to Tokyo.

Honestly I’m so grateful that our kids travel really well. Even when Jasiel runs around like crazy, we know she’s just being a toddler and this is just the season we are in. Chase is such a good big bro and always watches out for her, but of course whenever he gets into a silly mode, Jasiel is the first to copy him. When Chase gets in trouble, Jasiel is the first one to defend him and always tries to defuse the situation. After Clement created the video of our trip, both of them kept saying how much they want to go back again. Haha!

Before we knew it, we were at Odawara station. We had picked up some bento boxes at the bottom floor of Lusca Department Store at the station - I honestly love that there’s so many food options at their department stores. There was even a supermarket, so I picked up a bowl of strawberries that looked very yummy.

The shinkansen ride back to Tokyo Station was very fast, just half an hour. My MIL and aunt wanted to walk around Tokyo Station a bit more before heading to our next hotel, the La Vista Tokyo Bay. We knew we wouldn’t be back in this area either, so the kids went to walk around one last time in the area.

xoxo, K