The next day, Wednesday, took the cable car up to catch another cable car (Hakone Ropeway) to nearby Lake Ashi. Here you can see Mt Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan (3,776 meters/12,389 feet).

The Ropeway had troubles recently with an increased level of volcanic activity, but it is now again fully operational. Here is what it looked like as we went over the steam field.

Another view of Mt Fuji and one of the cable cars.

When we got down to the lake, we boarded a ship like this one for a sightseeing cruise. 

We sailed past Hakone Shrine, but didn’t stop there.

We got off the ship at the southern end of the lake and walked north toward a bus stop to take us back towards our hotel. A good length of our walk was along this forested pathway (Hakone Old Tokaido Road).

We caught our bus and went to the wonderful Hakone Open Air Museum. We are at the red museum pin on the map (near Gora).

The outdoor art is good, as is the indoor art by Picasso. 

There is a large tower of stained glass with internal, spiral staircases.

The tower is not easy to photograph! 

We took a bus back to the railroad station at Gora, and then took the cable car up a stop to the Hakone Art Museum with its extensive moss garden.

The next morning, we went back down to the train station and rode the Hakone Tozan mountain railway (an engineering marvel) back to Odawara to transfer for a train to Kyoto. Here is the map.

We took a Shinkansen train from Tokyo to Odawara, and from there transferred to a bus to Gora and our hotel. We will spend the next two days looking around Hakone before going back to Odawara to transfer to Kyoto.