Every Day is Sunday

It all started with a great gift.  For our anniversary, Jeff’s parents offered to buy us dinner and put us up in a nice hotel.  Since we celebrated our actual anniversary with Danielle, Melanie, and Seth in Bangkok, we took a raincheck and spent the next several months trying to find a spot to celebrate properly.  It took us two months and four countries, but we finally found the perfect hotel located at the base of Mt. Fuji.

We booked an “East meets West” room at the Green Plaza Hotel.  “West” because the bed was a proper foam mattress, “East” because the mattress was on the floor.  As much as we wanted to stay in our spacious, inviting and sleekly decorated room, it was a beautiful day and we felt compelled to go out and explore. 

Some of the best views of Mt. Fuji can be seen from the shores of Ashinoko (Lake Ashi), so we crossed the lake on a sightseeing boat which was randomly modeled after a 17th century French sailing warship. 

The views alone were worth the price of admission, so it was an added bonus when we got off the boat and found ourselves steps away from a beautiful cedar forest planted more than 400 years ago.

Just when we thought the day couldn’t get better, we took the bus to Hakone’s magnificent outdoor sculpture garden.  The pieces were original, thought-provoking, and sometimes just downright weird. 

The highlight of the garden was the “Symphonic Sculpture” by Gabriel Lorie, a stained glass exhibit that featured a fifty-foot high cylindrical building where everything but the ceiling and floor was stained glass.

The sun was starting to go down and the garden was closing, so we boarded a cable car that would drop us near our hotel.  What we saw next took our breath away.

We’ve seen many, many sunsets on this trip, and each one has been special in its own way.  But when the cable car crested the hill and we saw the sky erupt into a sea of scarlet-red clouds, we knew we had seen the best.

We celebrated 3 years, a perfect day, and the most amazing sunset we’ve ever seen by sitting down to a delicious 7-course meal of non-identifiable Japanese food.  Afterwards, it was time for a soak in a Japanese onsen (bath). 

Perhaps the main attraction of the Green Plaza Hotel is its large onsen which is fed by natural hot springs.  In Hakone we learned that communal bathing is an huge part of Japanese culture.  The Japanese even have an expression for it: hadaka no tsukiai (“naked communion”).  The idea is that communal bathing in the relaxed atmosphere of a hotel or ryokan with an attached onsen helps with breaking down barriers and getting to know other people.  What a strange practice in a culture that is normally quite formal and reserved!

We thought it was a little weird to celebrate our anniversary by bathing with perfect strangers, so we skipped the public bath that evening and took advantage of the smaller private onsen in our room which had an excellent view of Mt. Fuji.