After lunch we visited the Hakone checkpoint which showed how the Shogunate controlled the only road from Kyoto to Edo. The diodoramas illustrated how guards controlled the traffic of merchandise and the passage of women.
Nearby, sited on a small island hillock is the Detached Palace, once the summer residence of the royal family. This is a small Victorian-style mansion which has a very good view of the Lake and on cle ar days, Fuji-san. We enjoyed the tranquil settings of a well-manicured Japanese garden. Eventually we found ourselves trekking .jpg)
under the shade of tall cedar trees of the Ancient Cedar Avenue. The Edo shogunate ordered the planting of these tall trees providing the weary Kyoto-Edo traveller shade from the warm summer sun and shelter from the wintry snow.
We ended this long day with a refreshing dip in hot-springs. A visit to a Japanese Onsen is not for the shy and faint hearted. For one thing, the baths are communal and the next, bathers are supposed to indulge completely naked. It takes quite a while to get use to this lack of privacy but the Japanese use the bath for a good time of fellowship in a completely relaxed surrounding. One can presuppose that in these exposed surroundings, pristine settings lies the ingredients for honest unfettered relationships. The baths are separated between sexes of course for otherwise there will be no relaxation at all. So in the quiet wooded surroundings by the hillsides, we took our dips alternating between the hot waters of spring and the cold breeze blowing through the shaded forest. We enjoyed the sound of birds singing and the occasional butterfly flitting about the flowers leaves in the garden.
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