On the Road Again - Odawara

We began the morning of our fourth day in Japan by checking out of the Shiba Park Hotel for an overnight stay in Hakone. Thankfully we were able to leave our luggage with the front desk and take just an overnight bag with us on our hot springs adventure. We walked down to Hamamatsucho Station and first took the JR Keihin Tohoku Line to Shimbashi Station. Before transferring trains at Shimbashi, most of us bought bento box lunches for the train ride to Odawara. Eating a delicious bento on a leisurely train ride while watching the beautiful landscape roll by . . . another one of those things that needed to be done because we saw it on Soko ga Shiritai. Richard was the most daring of our group and purchased a beef tongue bento. The daring part of his purchase was the fact that this bento box came with it's own self heating apparatus strapped to the bottom of the box. The heater worked fine, and suffice it to say we were all very impressed, and a little frightened by Richard's lunch.

At Shimbashi station we transferred to the JR Tokaido Line and took a train to Odawara which is a city in Kanagawa prefecture. Our main objective in Odawara was Odawara Castle which you can see behind us in this group picture. The castle is a short walk from the station.

Odawara Castle was the stronghold of various daimyo through out Japanese history. From 1495 onward, five generations of the late Hojo clan held the castle. What made the castle significant was it's very strong defenses. Situated on a hill it was surrounded by moats with water on the low side and dry ditches on the hill side. Banks, walls and cliffs located all around the castle enabled it's defenders to repel attacks by the great warriors Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin. Eventually Toyotomi Hideyoshi took the castle in 1590 and awarded the holdings of the Hojo to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who in turn installed the Okubo Clan at Odawara. The original castle was eventually destroyed during the Meiji period with the current replica being built in 1960.

After touring Odawara castle we walked back to Odawara station. On our way back we decided to stop for lunch at a Soba restaurant along the way. As with many other times on this trip, we were very lucky that they were able to seat all fourteen of us together in a semi-private section of the restaurant.

Soba can be served both hot and cold, with a variety of different sauces and side dishes. Most of our group opted for cold soba with some type of side dish like shrimp tempura. I was very close to ordering this myself until I saw something on the menu I had always wanted to try, soba with duck sauce or Kamo Seiro. In this dish the noodles are served separately and then dipped into a rich duck sauce. The soba noodles were excellent of course, something I was beginning to take for granted in Japan where even the food from the convenience store was always delicious. The duck sauce was even better! Served warm, this very rich broth was extremely tasty with pieces of tender duck meat and negi floating around.

After an extremely satisfying lunch and some "beard papa" for dessert at the station (a popular Japanese pastry) it was off to Yumoto station and the hot springs of Hakone. Here's a picture of us at Odawara station before leaving for Hakone.