Under the Shadow of the Elusive Mt. Fuji.

In a quest to see Mt. Fuji (“Fuji-san”), we spent two nights at the Fujiya Hotel in Hakone. It’s the kind of majestic, old (i.e., expensive) hotel that would ordinarily be completely out of our budget in the context of this trip. Einstein stayed there; Eisenhower stayed there, as well as some famous people whose last names started with other letters of the alphabet. The trick is: the Fujiya has a special “foreigners” rate for a limited number of rooms that is roughly one-third the normal room rate. We grabbed it.
Seeing Fuji-san, however, proved more difficult. Beyond a brief glimpse of his majesty during our ride on the Shinkasen train from Nagoya, we never saw the mountain again. While in Hakone, we toured the Open-Air Museum, where I snapped this picture of Heather next to some woman who’d completely lost her head. As the name suggests, the majority of the museum is comprised of a sprawling, brilliant sculpture garden, including works by Rodin (of course), Miro, Milles, Henry Moore and Picasso.