Until that morning, I’d thought the gondola was mostly about seeing Fuji.
I was wrong.
The smell came first.
Sulfur.
It drifted through the gondola as we crossed above the steaming crater, white clouds rising from the ground below us. The kids looked down through the glass.
We had started the day in Hakone, walking along a main street barely half a mile long. Shops and restaurants crowded both sides. Dani found dessert before we found lunch: sweet potato glazed rice dumplings and Hakone’s soft tofu mochi.
The kids took one bite.
We ate the rest.
Then came fried eel, pork onigiri, and wagyu beef, tender and rare.
I was hungry enough that the meal seemed almost medicinal.
For days, everything had required some kind of negotiation. Trains. Tickets. Luggage. Hills. Kids getting tired. One small problem followed by another.
Nothing dramatic.
Just friction.
Hakone felt different.
We ate. We walked. Nobody needed to hurry.
Then we got on a train.
It switchbacked up the hills, climbing past family-run spas and little resorts tucked into the trees. At the next stop we transferred to the funicular, where the car itself was built in steps and tiers to match the steep track.
Then the gondola.
Up over the crater.
Down through the sulfur.
At Owakudani, we stepped off into Hell Valley and immediately found bathrooms, restaurants, and gift shops.
Of course.
Dani disappeared into the gift shop while I took photographs. The boys played on the patio furniture.
Eventually we found the famous black eggs.
Dani took another bite.
The boys insisted on trying them too.
“No.”
Into the trash.
For the rest of the trip, they reminded us.
“I like white eggs.”
“I like yellow eggs.”
“I don’t like yucky black eggs.”
Another gondola brought us down.
For a moment, Fuji appeared through the clouds.
“There!”
Then it was gone.
By sunset, we were aboard a pirate ship crossing the water to the far shore.
I headed for the stairs with my camera.
Avery was halfway after me when Dani stopped him.
“If you go, you have to be on your best behavior and listen to Daddy.”
He froze on the bottom step.
“I changed my mind.”
He turned around and sat back down.
Even the strangers laughed.
That night, we sat around a crowded table while the kids demolished plates of noodles.
Ice cream followed.
Soft-serve vanilla.
The bugs began their chorus.
The boys had forgotten the eggs.
Dani was already thinking of the dumplings she’d find in the morning.
~
Before the boys woke, Dani sat with her phone mapping every connection.
“No time for breakfast.”
I looked at her.
She shrugged.
“We have a train to catch. Nothing’s open this early anyway.”
“Track 6.”
“Eight minutes.”
“Platform 13.”
“Transfer in Kyoto.”
“Osaka by noon.”
Then the kids woke up.
A stuffed animal disappeared.
Someone couldn’t find a shoe.
Someone else had taken off the jacket we’d just put on.
By the time we rolled our suitcases toward the station, the schedule already felt fragile.
Halfway there, Dani stopped beside the river.
“Such a pretty morning.”
I looked up.
The water caught the first sunlight between the mountains. Steam drifted above it.
I reached for my camera.
Then we kept walking.
~
The train pulled away without us.
Dani looked back at her phone.
Every new route looked worse.
Longer.
More expensive.
More transfers.
She sat on a bench.
“Just, leave me alone.”
I knew she wasn’t angry about a train.
The train had simply become the place where everything else landed.
An hour later we sat together on another platform with new tickets in our hands.
Bullet trains thundered past every few minutes.
Neither of us said much.
Avery climbed onto the bench beside Dani, his stuffed palace cat tucked under one arm.
Without warning, he started singing.
“Chocolate bananas, zombie arms, and eyeballs.”
He threw his hands through the air as though stirring all of them together.
“I’m making something yucky!”
Dani laughed first.
Then I did.
The platform didn’t change.
Only we did.
~
Later the bullet train burst from a tunnel into daylight.
“Oh …”
I looked up.
Mount Fuji filled the window.
I’d been staring at schedules again.
She’d been looking outside.
The mountain slipped behind us before I could reach for my camera.