Hakone (near-ish Mt. Fuji)

	Here's the entrance arch to a rather ornate peace shrine. Note how the street and treeline are all slanted? This town is located on the rather steep inner slopes of a huge ancient volcanic crater. Driving through town is almost more verticle than horizontal at parts. The whole province is really absurdly hilly. It's also famous for being a checkpoint during the Tokugawa area charged primarily with keeping the hostage families in Edo (Tokyo).
	Ok, time to begin the hike up to the shrine. We've got a ways to go and lots of cool sculptures and such along the way.
	Here's a gate to a small side-shrine. Here's Mom and Dad completely oblivious to the fact the I'm taking their picture. Muahaha!
	Ok, here we go without the parental unti in the way.
	A bit farther up the hill, this rather impressive... thing... shows up next to another shrine. Haven't bothered translating what exactly it says. Trust me though, it's large. That stone lantern next to it comes up to a bit below my shoulder for reference.
	Here's said shrine it's next to.
	Here's that statue up a bit closer.
	Here's the peace shrine itself. It stands out really beautifully from the town, stark white against a hillside covered in evergreens. As for the lions on either side of the walkway (there's a whole row of them... maybe 5-7 pairs?), they were donated in pairs by various countries in the region. Sadly, I don't have decent shots of any of them. I was running low on space on my camera.
	Before we get to the shrine, however, we see a dragon fountain! Gotta love it.
	A closer look. He almost seems to be looking back...
	Here's the srhine a wee bit closer.
	Ah! Too close! That guy's decorating the shrine for the coming New Years celebrations.
	The landscape around the shrine was pretty cool too.
	Here's a rather ornate lantern off to one side of the peace shrine.
	Mmmmm.... Shintoism. So very many gods. I like this statue.
	I took the road less travelled by back to the bus and was rewarded by this row of statuary!
	I call this, "Matt tries to get artsy"
	Lest we forget where these pictures were taken...
	It was actually really hard to get these shots. I couldn't see the viewfinder from that angle, so I basically had to guess.
	Another one of these cool woodland spirits.
	What can I say? I love these trees.
	Here's that side shrine who's gate we saw earlier.
	It had a nice, if small, garden.
	Ah, good... it had been about 2 blocks since I saw a vending machine. best stick a few next to those prayer racks.
	Inside that gate we have a pair of frightening guardians.
	You don't want to mess with these guys
	Ok, leaving the shrine we took a ferry out to a mountain where we could get a good view of Mt. Fuji... if it weren't incredibly cloudy. No, this wasn't our ferry. This was just a boat we saw along the way.
	Hakone - or at least part of it - is very much a rsort town with cool, old-fashioned resorts like this one. Sadly, no, that's not where we stayed.
	Ok, up on the mountain we got a glimpse of the sun setting over the Pacific. The astute ones among you may wonder how we saw the sun setting over the Pacific from the western side of said ocean. The even more astute among you will have guessed the answer: it's all about penninsulas, baby. (For the record, I am not one of those very astute... I had to have this pointed out to me.)
	Here's the lake below. Hey, we saw that ship earlier!
	Setting sun again
	Here's the reason we couldn't see Fuji-san.
	It was kind of cool watching the fog roll over the town though. These clouds were just a bit too low to hit us on the mountaintop.
	Ok, sun's still setting. Check.
	The whole mountainside was covered with this brown grass.
	Ok, just checking. Can't be too careful.
	Oh, lest I forget, there was a shrine on top of this mountain. Lots of folks hike up the mountainside to visit it, rather than taking the cable car like we did. It looked like a nice hike and I'm sorry we didn't have time to take it. It wasn't a very nice day for it, but it still would have been fun.