Miyajima to Kawaguchiko or Hakone

Dear All,

We will come from Miyajima and want to stay a night near Fuji before heading to Tokyo. The hotel in Tokyo is already booked and cannot be changed and our JR Pass would run out the day before - therefore we want to be somewhere near Tokyo in order to save on transportation costs.

I am basically considering following options:
1) Leave Miyajimaguchi at 09:09, arrive in Mishima at 13:55, take the bus at 14:10 to Kawaguchiko, arrive at 15:45 - I am a bit scared here that I won't make the connection to the bus and then we need to wait 2 hours for the next one. Cost appx. 4500 Yen for the bus for 2 people.
2) Same as above but take a "cab" from Mishima to Kawaguchiko. Does anyone know how much this would approximately be?
3) Leave Miyajimaguchi at 09:09, arrive in Hakone at 15:12.

I would personally prefer to be around the 5 Lakes compared to Hakone as it looks "nicer" to me. Does anyone share that opinion or should I rather head to Hakone? Back to Tokyo we would then either take a bus from Kawaguchiko to Shinjuku (where our hotel is) or the train from Hakone. About the same travel time and cost so does not really matter.

Thanks a lot!

I just took the bus from mishima to kawaguchiko a few days ago. It was on a saturday in the middle of kawaguchiko peak saruka days and let me tell you, the bus was almost empty. And it's very easy to find the bus stop as well. You should be able to find it.

That is a really massive trip, and it will be very tiring. I say that because I've done similar from Miyajima, and after that experience I try to limit travel to about 3 hours or so in a day.

These are only suggestions, but have a look at staying at Hikone rather than Hakone (stop at the Maibara station and it is a short ride to Hikone - on lake Biwa with a castle and great food, nice little town). That would be maybe 3 hours from Miyajima, aroiund half way to Tokyo. Or Kamakura/Enoshima but I think the trip there would be almost as much of a production as the trip to Hakone.

Thanks for that suggestion. I would be open to switch the planning but I would save about 2 hours travel time which I need to take the next day for a cost of about 16.000 yen (2 people train ticket to Tokyo minus the cost for the bus) as our JR Pass would no longer be valid.

Is there any other nice town between Nagoya and Tokyo which is easily reachable and has nice Ryokans? Does anyone know by chance?

Thanks again!

Hakone would be easier via Odawara. But if you really wanna go to Kawaguchiko, then do that. Access isn't a difficult as you have made it out to be.