About Ayaka Morimoto
I am Ayaka Morimoto. I live two minutes from Hakone-Yumoto Station and I have spent nine years explaining to visitors how they should have got here. This site is the version of that conversation I do not have to repeat forty times a month.
Why I built this
People arrive at Odawara looking slightly betrayed. They have paid Shinkansen money, they are standing on a platform that is not in Hakone, and someone is now telling them to change onto a small mountain train. There is no Shinkansen station in Hakone. There never has been. The direct seated train from Tokyo is the Odakyu Romancecar out of Shinjuku, it costs ¥2,470 including the surcharge, and it takes 75 to 90 minutes. That is cheaper and more direct than the route most of the internet recommends.
The second thing people get wrong costs less but annoys them more. There is no one-day Hakone Freepass. Two days is the minimum validity sold, at ¥7,100, and almost every article on the subject skips that and tells you to buy it anyway. Sometimes that is still the right call. Sometimes it is not, and the difference is a few hundred yen and how much of the loop you actually intend to ride. I have written the sums out on is the Freepass worth it, including the two legs I could not find a published fare for.
How I work
Every number on this site was checked against a primary source, or against two sources that agreed, on 12 August 2026. Fares in Hakone changed on 1 October 2025, when the Freepass, the ropeway and the Lake Ashi cruise all went up together. A great many pages still quote the old figures, including pages dated this year, which is the main reason I date mine.
Where I could not confirm something, the page says so and points you at the operator instead. The cable-car fare between Gora and Sounzan is the clearest example: it is a real leg of the loop, I could not verify a figure for it, and so no page here gives one. That is worse for search rankings than making up a plausible number. It is better for you.
I do not name tour operators in the writing. I call them the operator, because this is not an advertisement for any of them and I would rather you chose on what is included than on a logo. Reviewer names are real, quoted exactly as they were written, typos and all. I do not tidy up other people’s English to make a point land better.
What I am not
Not Odakyu Electric Railway, not Odakyu Hakone, not the Hakone Tozan Railway, and not a tour operator. I sell nothing. If you need to change or cancel a booking, the operator or GetYourGuide is who you want, not me.
How the site is paid for
Affiliate commission from GetYourGuide when someone books through a link here, at the same price you would pay going direct. It does not move a rating. The clearest proof of that is the tour on the reviews page that scores 4.0, which I have kept, written up in full, and advised most people against. The full arrangement is on the affiliate disclosure page.
Corrections
Fares change and I will not always catch it first. If something here is wrong, or if you have a receipt for the cable-car fare I could not verify, I would genuinely like to see it: get in touch. Otherwise, start with Tokyo to Hakone and take an early train. Almost everything in Hakone winds down between about 16:30 and 17:00, and the day is decided before nine in the morning.