Yes, you heard right, again I got the season wrong by about a month and instead of the famous cherry (sakura) blossoms I had to content myself with the earlier blooming plum (ume) trees. And, similarly to so many other things I found in this vast city, they were stunningly beautiful but maybe just a little bit artificial. Walking in the spotless streets, where every tree and flower are grown on purpose, shopping in the hygiene-focus supermarkets, with products regularly wrapped in several layers of plastic, and blending into crowds of busy souls, who instinctively form queues and walk in lines, I felt like humankind had for once truly gained control over any type of natural behaviour and created a utopian society. 'Where are all the graffiti?', I kept wondering regularly. Luckily, certain details, like teams of volunteers cleaning up lamp posts full of stickers, artificial bird calls in subways stations for suicide prevention and the fenced-off public smoking areas revealed that even this place is not perfect and there are still rebels around. So, understandably, when we took a day trip to the hot-spring resort, Hakone, we saw several locals in heavy hiking gear trying to escape into nature, to walk in the wonderfully overgrown tropical forests, to smell the grizzly but natural egg-flavoured sulfur fumes from one of their many volcanos or to catch a glimpse of the magically snow-covered Mount Fuji, the probably most prominent symbol of this island nation.