Odawara-Hakone-Gotemba-Fuji

I had a couple of friends visit over from Singapore and the original plan was to visit Hakone to get a good view of Mt. Fuji. We bought the Hakone Free Pass so that we can go around the Hakone area freely.

We first made a pitstop though at the Odawara Castle. And then we went on the Hakone Sightseeing Cruise on Lake Ashi (also known as Hakone Lake), the Hakone Ropeway (i.e. cable car / cable-suspended gondolas similar to the one connecting mainland Singapore and Sentosa), and Hakone Tozan Cable Car (i.e. train being pulled by cables, like San Francisco's cable cars or the Peak Tram going to Victoria Peak in Hong Kong).

Finally, we went out of our way to the Gotemba Premium Outlets in Gotemba, only to find the best views of Fuji-san for this day trip. From Gotemba Premium Outlets, it took us 3.5 hours to get home inclusive of all the waiting for the infrequent night time trains. Had I known earlier, we could've gotten home an hour and a half earlier if only we had spent around 500 yen more each and used a different route. But anyway, we had a blast.