Sights in West Of Tokyo
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Hakone Open-Air Museum
Once you’ve arrived at Hakone-Yumoto Station, you might want to stop in at the Hakone Tourist Information Centre in front before you start exploring. It’s possible to board the delightful two-car mountain train that slowly winds through the forest to Gōra. Between Odawara and Gōra on the toy-train Hakone-Tōzan Line is the Hakone Open-Air Museum. This art museum is a short walk from Chōkoku-no-mori Station, just before Gōra. As well as paintings, the museum has a 70,000-sq-metre outdoor sculpture park that features works by artists such as Auguste Rodin and Henry Moore. The outdoor bronzes are particularly lovely in the winter under a light blanket of snow.
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Ryōsen-Ji Treasure Museum
Located next to Ryōsen-ji temple is the Ryōsen-ji Treasure Museum, displaying exhibits relating to the arrival of Westerners in Japan. These include pictures depicting Okichi-san, a courtesan who was forced to give up the man she loved in order to attend to the needs of the brutal barbarian, Harris. When Harris left Japan five years later, Okichi-san was stigmatised for having had a relationship with a foreigner and she was eventually driven to drink and suicide.
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Hakone Museum of Art
Gōra is at the end of the Hakone-Tōzan Line and the start of the funicular and cable-car trip to Tōgendai on the shore of Ashi-no-ko. There’s nothing to see at Gōra, and you’ll probably want to wander on. Further up the hill, 10 minutes from Gōra Station, is the Hakone Museum of Art, which has an interesting moss garden and a collection of ceramics from Japan and across Asia.
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Ryōsen-Ji
About 700m south of Izukyū Shimoda Station is Ryōsen-ji, which is now famous as the site where Commodore Perry and representatives of the Tokugawa shōgunate signed a treaty whose conditions (favourable to the US, of course) supplemented those outlined in the Treaty of Kanagawa, which was signed, in 1854.
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Chōraku-Ji
Next door to Ryōsen-ji is Chōraku-ji, a pleasant little temple that is worth a quick look.
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Hōfuku-ji
In the centre of town is Hōfuku-ji, a temple that is chiefly a museum memorialising the life of Okichi.
The museum is filled with scenes and artefacts from the various movie adaptations of her life on stage and screen. Okichi's grave is also here, in the far corner of the back garden, next to a faded copper statue. Other stones in this garden are dedicated to her, with the names of actors who played her.
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Togawa-ke Oshi-no-Ie Restored Pilgrim's Inn
Fuji-Yoshida's oshi-no-ie (pilgrims' inns) have served visitors to the mountain since the days when climbing Mt Fuji was a pilgrimage rather than a tourist event. Shide (paper streamers) still mark their entrances, though very few still function as inns. Togawa-ke Oshi-no-le, on Honchō dōri, offers some insight into the fascinating Edo-era practice of Mt Fuji worship.
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Shimoda Kōen & Wakanoura Promenade Park
If you keep walking east from Perry Rd, you'll reach the pleasant hillside park of Shimoda Kōen, which overlooks the bay. It's loveliest in June, when the hydrangeas are in bloom. The coastal road is also a fine place to walk. If you have an hour or so, keep following it around the bay, passing an overpriced aquarium, and eventually you'll meet up with the 2km-long Wakanoura Promenade, a stone path along a peaceful stretch of beach.
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Sai-ko Iyashi-no-Sato Nenba
This complex opened in 2006 on the site of some historic thatched-roof houses, washed away in a typhoon 40 years earlier. Inside these dozen reconstructed frames are demonstrations of silk and paper crafts; restaurants specialise in soba and konyakku (arrowroot starch).
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Ryōsen-ji & Chōraku-ji
A 25-minute walk south of Shimoda Station is Ryōsen-ji, site of the treaty that opened Shimoda, signed by Commodore Perry and representatives of the Tokugawa shōgunate. The temple's Black Ship Art Gallery displays artefacts relating to Perry, the Black Ships, and Japan as seen through foreign eyes and vice versa.
Behind and up the steps from Ryōsen-ji is Chōraku-ji, where a Russo-Japanese treaty was signed in 1854; look for the cemetery and namako-kabe (black-and-white lattice-patterned) walls.
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Narusawa Ice Cave
Close to the road, this cave was formed by lava flows from a prehistoric eruption of Mt Fuji.
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Kōyō-dai
There are good views of Mt Fuji from this lookout, near the main road, and from the western end of the lake.
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Itchiku Kubota Art Museum
Near the north shore of the lake, this unique museum presents lavishly dyed kimonos by Itchiku Kubota, whose life's work of continuous landscapes is displayed in a grand hall made of cypress.
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Gyokusenji
Founded in 1590, this Zen temple is most famous as the first Western consulate in Japan, established in 1856. A small museum has artefacts of the life of Townsend Harris, the first consul general. The bas-relief of a cow in front of the temple depicts the serving of the first glass of milk in Japan, which Harris requested during an illness. It's a 25-minute walk from Shimoda Station, or take bus 9 to Kakizaki-jinja-mae (¥160, five minutes).
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Gekkō-ji
This central Fuji-Yoshida district feels like the little town that time forgot, with original mid-20th-century facades. Inside are some surprisingly hip cafes and shops, and it's worthwhile getting a little lost here.
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Fuji Visitor Center
If Mt Fuji isn't visible, this visitor centre shows what you've missed. An English video gives a great summary of the mountain and its geological history.
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Fuji Sengen-jinja
A necessary preliminary to the ascent was a visit to this deeply wooded, atmospheric temple, built in 1615 but thought to have been the site of a shrine as early as 788. It is worth a visit for its 1000-year-old cedar; its main gate, which is rebuilt every 60 years (slightly larger each time); and its two one-tonne mikoshi used in the annual Yoshida no Himatsuri (Yoshida Fire Festival). From Mt Fuji Station you can walk (15 minutes) or take a bus to Sengen-jinja-mae (¥150, five minutes).
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