Traveling is never easy with young children.
We took the 'romance car' train from Shinjuku station. This train goes straight to Hakone with only one stop at Odawara near the end. It was a very nice roomy express train filled with happy vacationers who were very nice and tolerant of young children.
It was only an hour and ten minutes on the train but, my daughters were bored and antsy, wanting to get up and roam around as soon as possible. Luckily, the bathroom train car has lots of space and windows. Very fun place for young children.
While in Hakone we took a bus from Odawara to a museum up on a mountain. I didn’t realize that Hakone was a ‘mountain town’ and all of the Onsen and ryokans are on a steep twisting scary road. The bus lurch back and forth as we climbed up the hairpin turns.
I was tasked with holding a bag with my right foot, the stroller with my left foot and left hand, and holding a whiny sleepy crying daughter in my right arm. Needless to say, I didn’t get to admire the scenery much.
This long 30 minute ride was followed by a 700 meter walk (hike?) up and down the steep hills to get to the museum. We expected and prepared for the cold but, wow it was cold! For the walk my older daughter huddled under blankets and coats in the stroller. Meanwhile, I carried my younger daughter the entire time. My younger daughter wore her winter coat and I even wrapped my jacket around her as we walked but, she was cold and was constantly complaining ‘さむい〜’. Poor thing. She even got a slight fever the day we got home.
We also got to ride the Hakone Tozan railway, a train that travels up and down the steep mountain of Hakone. It slowly lurched back and forth as it made its way down the twisty path. It was fun and luckily not too busy. I'm sure a weekend would be much more stressful.
Aside from stress and tiredness, we were able to safely travel to, from, and around Hakone.
We only stayed in Hakone a short time, but we found a lot of things to do:
Hakone Trip ③ - Activities