Dinner in Hakone

Part of the deal at our ryokan was traditional Japanese dinner both nights - and we also added breakfast, mostly because this particular ryokan was not located near many restaurants.

The ryokan provided those lovely purple yakata (summer kimono) to wear to dinner (and to the baths) along with instructions on how to wear them. Indoor slippers and tabi (white divided socks) were also provided.

If you are the kind of person who simply must know what you are eating before you eat it, Japan is going to be a bit of a challenge for you. If we guessed correctly at 50% of what we ate, I'd be surprised. Wait staff had extremely limited English, but wth lots of gesturing we could at least figure out how to eat everything, and solved some of the mysteries of a particular dish. And honestly, there were some things I just did not want to know too much about. Like these guys:

I don't know what this is. It looks like they have eyes. They - it? - were better with soy sauce.

We had quite a variety each evening, plenty of food (too much really) and the meals were different, although some components were the same. There was always some kind of sushi (no rolls though), salad, miso, and a hot pot (stew) of some sort. Also several different fish servings, all delicious.

Breakfast was not too much different. I discovered that as much as I love fish, I simply cannot deal with raw fish at 7:30 am.

Where's my cereal?