I'm in the wonderful mountains of Hakone, happily ensconced in a room with a view.
More about this place later, but first a bit of catching up from Osaka.
I'm a Bostonian, so for me Boston is the standard definition of "city." And it stretches the imagination to think that "city" could describe both Osaka and Boston -- the scale is so t5otally, entirely different. Osaka goes on and on and on and on and on, non-stop, block after block after block after mind-numbing block. I stayed at the Swissotel in Namba for 2 nights, then moved to the Ritz-Carlton near Osaka station. Was supposed to stay for 2 nights, but found it a bit too posh for my mood and left after just 1.
The Ritz did provide me, however, with a Hamburger to Remember. The Ritz Carlton brand has multiple faces. In Boston, there is, or rather there was, the Old Ritz, a formal, often dowdy, place where ladies of a certain age would go to have tea. Then some years ago came a New Ritz, just as upscale but appealing to a far more contemporary crowd. The bar is funky, the decor is modern, and it feels like a place for the living more than for the dead.
The Osaka Ritz, alas, is more along the lines of Boston's Old Ritz. The wall hangings are of fruit or old birds, and that pretty much describes the patrons, as well.
Anyway, I arrived there at 11:30 and was told that my room wouldn't be ready for a couple of hours. I'm still gimpy, the Ritz isn't exactly in the middle of a shopping area for normal people (a Ferrari-Maserati dealership is on the Ritz's building's ground floor, and there's a Bvlgari store on the next corner), so it seemed like a reasonable idea to find a bite to eat in the hotel. "Can I get a sandwich or light lunch in this room," I asked the hostess at the Tea Room. "Of course," sez she, escorting me to a table. Dressed in a mostly clean Eddie Bauer t-shirt and jeans, I might easily be mistaken for the nouveau pauvre who had lost all their money over the past few months and had sold their pearls and/or children. Anyway, the menu offered a hamburger, and that's what I ordered. It cost 4500 Yen, or about $48.
It wasn't just a good hamburger, it was a fantastic hamburger. On a sesame roll. With lettuce, tomato, some sort of interesting sauce, and foie gras. That's right, foie gras. If I'd seen that it had foie gras, I wouldn't have ordered it, but I didn't, so I did. And after a brief acknowledgment to both the unfortunate cow and even more unfortunate goose, I enjoyed that burger.
It didn't simply come with French fries, it came with 3 different kinds of fries. There was a pile of shoestring fries, then there were 4 steak fries on top of the pile. Next to that were 3 slices of fried potato-onion things. And the water glass kept getting refilled, with lemon-scented water.
Before this experience, I believe that the most I paid for a burger was $16 or $18, at the Bristol Lounge in the Four Seasons in Boston. Darned good burger, that one, even if it's served with only 1 type of fries.
So now I'm at the Hyatt in Gora, and getting here is a pile of fun. From Osaka (or Tokyo, for that matter), you take the bullet train to Odawara, then change to a local train going to a place called Hakone-Yumoto. That's where the real fun begins, as you get on a mountain-climbing train that ingeniously handles switchbacks -- instead of trying to make a hairpin turn, the train zig-zags up the mountain, with the front of the train becoming the back of the train many times over. Confused? Well so was I, and I haven't figured out how to explain it, so you'll just have to come here yourself.
More about this place later, but first a bit of catching up from Osaka.
I'm a Bostonian, so for me Boston is the standard definition of "city." And it stretches the imagination to think that "city" could describe both Osaka and Boston -- the scale is so t5otally, entirely different. Osaka goes on and on and on and on and on, non-stop, block after block after block after mind-numbing block. I stayed at the Swissotel in Namba for 2 nights, then moved to the Ritz-Carlton near Osaka station. Was supposed to stay for 2 nights, but found it a bit too posh for my mood and left after just 1.
The Ritz did provide me, however, with a Hamburger to Remember. The Ritz Carlton brand has multiple faces. In Boston, there is, or rather there was, the Old Ritz, a formal, often dowdy, place where ladies of a certain age would go to have tea. Then some years ago came a New Ritz, just as upscale but appealing to a far more contemporary crowd. The bar is funky, the decor is modern, and it feels like a place for the living more than for the dead.
The Osaka Ritz, alas, is more along the lines of Boston's Old Ritz. The wall hangings are of fruit or old birds, and that pretty much describes the patrons, as well.
Anyway, I arrived there at 11:30 and was told that my room wouldn't be ready for a couple of hours. I'm still gimpy, the Ritz isn't exactly in the middle of a shopping area for normal people (a Ferrari-Maserati dealership is on the Ritz's building's ground floor, and there's a Bvlgari store on the next corner), so it seemed like a reasonable idea to find a bite to eat in the hotel. "Can I get a sandwich or light lunch in this room," I asked the hostess at the Tea Room. "Of course," sez she, escorting me to a table. Dressed in a mostly clean Eddie Bauer t-shirt and jeans, I might easily be mistaken for the nouveau pauvre who had lost all their money over the past few months and had sold their pearls and/or children. Anyway, the menu offered a hamburger, and that's what I ordered. It cost 4500 Yen, or about $48.
It wasn't just a good hamburger, it was a fantastic hamburger. On a sesame roll. With lettuce, tomato, some sort of interesting sauce, and foie gras. That's right, foie gras. If I'd seen that it had foie gras, I wouldn't have ordered it, but I didn't, so I did. And after a brief acknowledgment to both the unfortunate cow and even more unfortunate goose, I enjoyed that burger.
It didn't simply come with French fries, it came with 3 different kinds of fries. There was a pile of shoestring fries, then there were 4 steak fries on top of the pile. Next to that were 3 slices of fried potato-onion things. And the water glass kept getting refilled, with lemon-scented water.
Before this experience, I believe that the most I paid for a burger was $16 or $18, at the Bristol Lounge in the Four Seasons in Boston. Darned good burger, that one, even if it's served with only 1 type of fries.
So now I'm at the Hyatt in Gora, and getting here is a pile of fun. From Osaka (or Tokyo, for that matter), you take the bullet train to Odawara, then change to a local train going to a place called Hakone-Yumoto. That's where the real fun begins, as you get on a mountain-climbing train that ingeniously handles switchbacks -- instead of trying to make a hairpin turn, the train zig-zags up the mountain, with the front of the train becoming the back of the train many times over. Confused? Well so was I, and I haven't figured out how to explain it, so you'll just have to come here yourself.
1 comment:
Gee- I wonder what they charge for a root canal. All sounds great.
drpaul
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