Hakone/Tokyo

We had a huge breakfast in the Ryokan- eggs, fish, warm tofu, more fish, some very slimy seaweed miso soup and rice:













We then headed to the Pola art museum:

http://www.polamuseum.or.jp/english/nature/01.html

They currently have a large Chagall exhibit which is quite good. They also have a very good collection of both western and Japanese art. The building itself is quite impressive and it is set in a in a beautiful forest.

We drove back to Tokyo and stopped at a Tonkatsu place we went to the last time I was here. http://www.butagumi.com/nishiazabu/index.html. I simply can't emphasize how great this place is. Tonkatsu is breaded fried pork cutlet. This place gets high end pork from all over Japan and Spain and apparently the owner buys directly from the farms so the price is lower. The atmosphere of the restaurant is really good and each of the different things you get (shredded cabbage, (red) miso soup, white rice, tonkatsu sauce, and the actual tonkatsu), is perfect.

In the afternoon and early evening I spent hours trying to secure places to stay while travelling solo.....with a lot of help from Kuniko. Pretty much all the places lonely planet recomended were full so I had to find other places....it took a while.

For dinner we headed to a small Japanese restaurant that has Japanese and western style food. It was great and very reasonably priced. We had salad with umeboshi, cabbage with bacon with lots of garlic, fried little shrimp (you eat the shell and head- actually really good), and lamb shank in a tomato sauce.