6180-6180 Travel Guide

The Atagawa Tropical & Alligator Garden is a hot-spring-heated tropical garden on the east Izu coast at Atagawa Onsen — bananas, royal palms and orchids stay green, and alligators and tropical animals are kept. The summer-like greenhouse is a distinctive family spot on the Izu coast.

Atami Onsen Street is the hot-spring core of Atami, Shizuoka, on a hillside by the sea, flourishing since the Edo period when Tokugawa Ieyasu loved its springs. From JR Atami Stn it is minutes to shopping streets like Ginza-dori, Heiwa-dori and Nakamise, lined with ryokan, foot baths, souvenir shops and seafood restaurants, with traces of geisha culture at dusk. Atami's mildly saline spring is mineral-rich; pair sea views with a soak any season, plus summer fireworks over the bay and winter plum blossoms at the garden.

Cape Irozaki is the southernmost point of the Izu Peninsula, pushing out between the Sagami and Enshu seas. Cliffs rise more than a hundred metres above the water, and dark volcanic rock, deep blue sea and evergreen hillside make a stark contrast; on clear days the Izu Islands are visible, and the view was chosen as one of Japan's Hundred Landscapes. A white lighthouse stands at the tip: designed by a British engineer in 1871, originally a nine-metre timber tower and later rebuilt in concrete, it still guides shipping. An easy ten-minute uphill path from the car park reaches it, then a steep stair drops to Ishimuro Shrine, pressed against the cliff. Its sanctuary is said to be built from the mast of a thousand-koku ship, and it honours a deity of safe voyages as well as matchmaking; a small Kumano Shrine sits further out on the headland. The full loop takes a little over an hour. The alternative is a sightseeing boat, which looks up at the cliffs and sea caves from below. The cape belongs to Minamiizu in Shizuoka, about fifty minutes by bus from Izukyu-Shimoda, not central Ito.

Atami Baien lies along the Ui River in Baiencho, Atami, and is the plum garden that blooms earliest and turns red latest in Japan. It holds 59 varieties and about 470 plum trees, many decades to over a century old, including rare cultivars such as Toji-bai and Baigyo-koh. Thanks to Shizuoka's mild climate, early cultivars open in early January and the main varieties follow in succession through early March, giving a season close to two months. Six little bridges cross the stream, and the Plum Cascade, the Shinpei Nakayama Memorial Museum, the Korean Garden and a free foot bath fed by direct hot-spring water are scattered along the way, making it easy to pair with a winter stay in Atami's onsen district.