We had a rather long transit day today… because our visit to Keiukan had taken us somewhat out of our way, but I was looking forward to stopping along the way to get some photographs of the beautiful scenery we had driven in past the evening before. The Haya River is extremely picturesque… so apologies in advance for the barrage of photographs. Not really sorry.
Driving through the twisting mountain roads that line the river, there is often no where to stop at all, except perhaps at small maintenance pull over areas before and after bridges… so we got kinda loose with it, and pulled over where we could and just popped the hazards on while I was jumping in and out to take photos. Mr K is already known to the police – I’m sure they wouldn’t be surprised if he was pulled up for parking illegally. 🙂
Saw this very sturdy looking suspension bridge and walked a short way out on it to see if I could get some nice photos down the river… though I did take the time to translate a sign in case it was telling me that it was private property or something. Nope, all good – I don’t have a fishing license, but also, no intention to fish!
I really enjoy driving through these mountainous highways – it’s slow going, the speed limits are low for obvious reasons, and you night only be going 250kms for the day, but it will take you all day because of the slow speeds, inevitable roadworks and other delays. Thoroughly gorgeous though, so you don’t really care.
The Kotoji Falls (we’d call them a cascade tbh), were named in memory of the love between Gohei (a young man from Narada), and Imoji, a daughter of Yasumura who threw themselves into the Hayakawa River settling their unrequited love (interesting translation). Apparently their two bodies were found lying on top of each other in the pool below.
Another suspension bridge! Only this one felt a little bit less stable than the last one… like swinging wildly and rocking crazily with every step!
I felt really unsteady out on the bridge – might not be the best plan for someone who had a total knee reconstruction about 10 weeks ago and was still a bit iffy on uneven terrain! 😀
Oh, probably should have read this *before* deciding to go walkout on the rickety suspension bridge… I figured it was just warning me about my lack of fishing license again! Good thing I’ve been working on those stability exercises on my new knee!
Saw this poster advertising the Hakone Ropeway that we visited in 2017 to get our first views of Mt Fuji… first views on our second trip. Our first trip to Japan, Mr K, Angus and my mum actually *climbed* Mt Fuji, but never actually saw the top of the mountain as it was in clouds the entire time.
What a beautiful drive full of stunning scenery.
We made it to Hakone by about 3pm… which is where we kept seeing this sign. Thought it was literally a monkey warning – no, just a warning about wildlife in general.
I had a feeling this gorgeous weather wasn’t going to last and it turned out I was absolutely right. 
Me in the car: “There’s some snow on those mountains; I bet it’s chilly up there.” #famouslastwords
We have noticed that Sondora shows us the topographical /literal map of things and sometimes it looks like spaghetti junction, and no sooner does that happen than you get on a highway and it turns into a graphic representation of the destinations rather than a literal visual description (*think of a London Tube map compared to the A-Z). 
And then suddenly, it was fucking snowing! Mr K says he saw a monkey run across the road in front of us – but I think he was pulling my leg and just wanted to have one up on me. 
Beautiful!
We noted that Sondara was showing some pretty spaghetti/worm like road maps coming up – just what you need when it is unseasonably and unexpectably snowing on what you thought might be a fairly uneventful drive. 
Then we came out of a tunnel and we were up in the mountains and it was a winter wonderland! OMG – so beautiful. I haven’t seen such gorgeous scenes since we did Christmas in Canada in 2017.
It was just so beautiful… 
We stopped at a Okuhida Onsengo Kamitakara restop which had these weasels everywhere as a mascot – and we expected to find it full of weird Japanese weasel mascots and of course, fried chicken… instead we found : 
As quickly as we entered into the snowy altitudes we were returned to the autumnal glacial alluvial valleys again. 
We eventually made our way to the Dormy Inn in Toyama City – which I guess is like an American Holiday Inn or an Australian Rydges… there wasn’t much happening here by the time we arrived quite late in the day, but we did find an nice izakaya open and managed to have a nice fishy dinner. Below: miso crap, sashimi plate (salmon, snapper and yellowtail) and some sea cucumber). 