My favourite day trip from Tokyo
At Shinjuku railway station buy a Hakone free pass this will entitle you to free travel to and around the Hakone holiday area for about 3 days, you will be given a detailed map of the area in English. You cannot use your JR rail pass on this line as it is not a JR line. Being a romantic old soul I usually pay a supplement to travel on the Romance Express, a lovely pink confection of a train, this is allegedly for honeymooners - hence the name but it is packed with Japanese day trippers. About an hour after leaving Shinjuku you should arrive at the nice clean modern town of Odawara, after having a look around catch a bus to Moto Hakone. The bus station is situated directly outside the station I don't know the number of the bus and the destination will be in kanji - just say the magic word Hakone and someone will direct you. At the start of this bus ride you slowly pass through an interesting townscape which later changes to a twisty mountain road with small old picturesque villages, If you like you can get off at any point and catch a later bus at no additional cost, just show your pass. You will get thrown about quite a bit as the bus goes fairly fast around multiple bends during the 1 hour ride. A good place to stop is at the famous Hotel Fujiya, this is a very old building built in the Japanese style you can stop here for a cup of tea, across the road is a shop that sells original Japanese prints, one day I will buy one. I chatted to the lady owner for about an hour as she described the history of these prints and how to recognise a genuine one. She is an elderly lady and her father owned the shop before her, some of these prints were originally painted from scenes in this village. Back on a bus and continue the journey. On arriving at Lake Ashi board one of the boats that will take you on the next stage of the journey to Togendai. Be careful here, not all the boats accept the free pass - about half an hour after boarding you will arrive at Togendai for the next stage which is on a ropeway. By the way there is a famous temple at Moto Hakone that you should take a look at before embarking, you will see it's tori standing in the lake, there is also a large steel one across the road. You may at this point get a good view of Fuji san if the weather is favourable and there is no cloud. You do not need signs for any of this, you must just follow the other tourists. Half way along the ropeway you have the opportunity to disembark to look at smelly pools of bubbling sulphurous mud - if this is you scene ...feel free, I prefer to give it a miss! Next stop is Sounzan. At Sounzan is an art museum with a stunning Japanese garden. The garden is better than the art - please take a look.  From Sounzan to the next stop is Gora a short ride in a cable  car - again it is straightforward and the ride takes about 20 minutes. The end of the ride is at Gora station take a look around town, just one 100 yard main street. It was in Gora that we got chatting to a lovely young lady she had asked if we wanted help as I was phoning my friend to arrange a meeting place in Yokohama later that day, I was indeed having trouble trying to use a subway railway ticket to make a phone call. She is a concert pianist and it is strange that she said she found Gora boring, But - that's exactly what I say about English towns they all look alike, but of course for us foreigners Gora is quite interesting although there is nothing much to get the pulse racing here. From Gora station a take the small train (there is only one and it goes only one way) to Hakone Yumoto and from there get the Romance Express back to Shinjuku. This sounds like a long journey but it can be done leisurely in a day. Take care on Shinjuku station it is the busiest station in the world and the size of a small town its easy to get lost, Tokyo station likewise. It is interesting that Tokyo has a station called Tokyo - London does not have a station called London and New York doesn't have a station called New York.