My wife and I recently went down to Atami, a small city on the ocean in Shizuoka prefecture just an hour—at most—away from Tokyo by shinkansen. Atami is one of those Japanese cities that looks like it was booming back in the bubble period but has since fallen into a state of disrepair, at least compared to cities such as Kyoto, Karuizawa and Tokyo. I can’t say for certain as I was not in Japan back in the 1980s, but it really looks like there was a building boom of second home/vacation type apartment buildings, many of which are now boarded up or overgrown with weeds and ivy, places where the original owners perhaps passed away with no heirs interested in taking care of out of date rooms. There are also many blocks of nothing but concrete foundations remaining that look like they had been hit by bombs, although they were actually just razed until they can be rebuilt. There are also many new places, hotels and membership vacation stay type places, as well as some very beautiful ryokan that are well over 100 years old. Further up on the hill side there are a lot of newer and well-maintained places, both homes and small company owned getaways for use by employees.

We went to check out a time-share type program that offers a mix of hotels, cabins and resorts all over Japan; the offer for this initial inspection stay was just too good to pass up. Plus, we wanted to visit the Atami Museum of Art (MOA) to view the National Treasure folding screen painted with ume trees in bloom and to see some early blooming sakura (cherry trees). Although I had been to Atami quite a few times before, I think this was the first time I had stayed in the town.

After arriving we went to our “hotel” to drop off our bags as check in time was still a couple of hours away. I put hotel in quote marks as our room was much more like a home, spacious, with a full kitchen, a large living room, and a hinoki (Japanese cypress) bath tub big enough for me fed with 70 degree natural hot spring water with a view of the sea through the window next to the tub. After that we had about two hours before we could get into our room so we headed back towards the station to have a look around. And to do some snacking.

When you exit Atami Station and cross the street you will find a covered shopping street with many small shops selling omiyage, especially himono (dried fish) and a few restaurants, including a couple of sushi shops I’d been to before (nothing too memorable about the sushi, just the location). We found a shop selling various kamaboko on a stick and stopped to buy a couple to eat while walking around. There were a lot of small shops selling sweets that seemed to be popular with younger people, and a takoyaki place that looked good. So in we went for a couple of highballs and some takoyaki. When our takoyaki arrived, though, it wasn’t what we were expecting; no fried balls of batter filled with pieces of octopus, just a large, flat and very thin and crisp disc, like a very large senbei. It was made by pouring the batter on a hot griddle, then pulling down a top piece of hot steel to flatten it. It was interesting, and pretty good.

After that it was back to the station to do some shopping for juice, beer, and snacks, including of course kamaboko and a block of excellent smoked cheese made in Shizuoka. Who knew! I spotted one interesting thing while there; a vending machine that looked like it sold packs cigarettes. Upon closer inspection I realized the packs didn’t contain tobacco but instead tea from Shizuoka. I made a mental note to return later to buy a pack to take back to Tokyo.

Once we were checked into our room I opened a can of brewed in Shizuoka Sapporo beer and started looking for places to eat dinner. Several places looked good, but we finally decided on an izakaya called Hisahana (ひさ花). After wandering around the streets of Atami checking out restaurants in the still warm evening air, we came to Hisahana. We looked inside and it looked good, and not too crowded. Okami-san directed us to a table for four, with plexiglass barriers separating us from the couple on the other side of the table.

We ordered a couple of highballs to begin with as we looked over the menu. The menu had a lot of fish, not surprising as we were in a fishing port town. So we ordered a variety of local fish, starting with sashimi chūtoro maguro, inada, aji, sawara, ebi and local Fuji-san aka- masu (富士山紅鱒) and grilled kinmedai, as well as what turned out to be a very nice and tasty simmered nasu (eggplant). I also ordered some Shizuoka nihonshu from Shidaizumi Shuzō, a brand I was vaguely familiar with but made a point of remembering for later. It was a nice and relaxed meal, and a pleasant change being able to stay after 8:00 as in Tokyo during the latest state of emergency.

hat night we decided to take a short ferry ride out to Haysushima, an island about thirty minutes or so away. The guy at the front desk of our hotel gave us a schedule, which was handy as service is somewhat irregular. My wife and I both enjoyed long soaks in the huge wooden bath tub that night and went to bed fairly early.

The next morning we had breakfast of fruit and some toast we made from bread we had bought the previous day, then packed a few things and headed out. After walking around town for a bit we arrived just in time to catch the ferry. Considering it was a Monday morning, the boat was fairly crowded, although not enough so to not be able to sit where we wanted to. Maybe in the summer there are more things to do on Hatsushima Island, but not in the winter. We got off the boat and then headed to our left, past twenty or thirty small restaurants, all of which had more or less the same menu with the exact same price. There was a small fisherman’s shop with several small sharks in a concrete tank and a big, yellowish eel-like fish I had never seen before. And there was a public toilet built in the shape of he and she ika (squid a local specialty), a monument marking the arrival of electricity to the island, a school, and a cemetery where most of the graves had the same few names as on the restaurants. Despite the bright sunshine, the air was somewhat chilly, so we decided to catch the same boat back to Atami, arriving just before it sailed. If we had wanted to I think we could have walked around the entire island in under two hours. I wanted to check out the fishing boat docks to see about fishing charters but there wasn’t time.

Back on the mainland we walked over towards the Korakuen Hotel, the tallest building in town. On the way we stopped by a shop selling fishing gear that also offers charters. I picked up a brochure for later. The Korakuen Hotel was practically empty; we suspect it formerly hosted busloads of Chinese tourists who are currently unable to enter Japan. After using the restrooms we bought some snacks for later from the vast souvenir shop where we were outnumbered by staff five or six to two.

By the time we left it was nearly 2:00 and not having eaten lunch we headed to Kinmaru, the kinmedai ramen shop we came across the previous evening. We each ordered the basic kinmedai ramen and a couple of highballs. The ramen was excellent, light and medium thin noodles in a broth made from chicken stock and the heads of who knows how many kinmedai, rich in collagen from the fish heads, and served in golden bowls that my wife thought would be suitable for use in tea ceremony. The ramen was topped with a slice of pink kinmedai hanpen made by the shop, some greens, and a few slivers of local yuzu. An excellent lunch, and cheap. From there it was back to our lodgings to decide which sushi shop we would eat at for dinner.

After lunch we strolled around the neighborhood looking at early sakura, some with many mejiro (birds) flitting about. We came across a small fish market where there was the same long, yellow fish I had seen earlier on the island. It was a utsubo, or Japanese moray eel. And this one had a half swallowed fish stuck in its jaws and throat, both victims of a fisherman’s net. Apparently, eating utsubo is popular in Kochi, but not so much elsewhere, although popular enough to be sold, probably to be served as sashimi or kara-age style.

From there we headed up the hill past pipes spewing hot onsen water towards a grove of ume trees that was said to be partially blooming. We stopped at a Kinomiya Jinja, a large shrine with an enormous camphor (shōnō) tree said to be over 2,000 years old, then continued on towards the ume, stopping once more at a small patisserie where we picked up a few small cakes for later. It was almost 5:00, so we decided to skip the ume and head back to home base. Along the way we decided to see if a liquor store had the sake we had liked so much before so we went in to check. This shop did not carry any Shidaizumi products, but they knew of another place that probably did. The boss, for a lack of not having a better word to describe the man who seemed to be the owner as well as the father of the young kids playing and doing homework, called the other shop which indeed did have what we were looking for.

My wife headed back to our room while I set out for the other shop. Atami is not really a very big city, so the place was easy to find and just a five-minute walk away. I selected a couple of different bottles, paid and headed back towards our place, stopping back at the first liquor shop to say thanks and buy a bottle of local, Atami Ale.

There was one thing we had set our minds on doing during this stay in Atami: Eat some good sushi! Atami is, after all, a fishing port, as well as a resort town. With a good local supply of fish and a steady stream of at least fairly well-to-do visitors from Tokyo the conditions for some good to excellent sushi restaurants seem to exist. We decided the best way to go about finding the best sushi in town was to search on line, especially in Tableog, and to ask around, especially people in food related businesses. We asked the man with the fish shop, the person with the kinmedai ramen shop, the check in person at our lodging, and more, and eventually narrowed our search to two places: Hifumi Sushi (一二三鮨) and Awashima Sushi (淡島寿司). There were two other places as well, one that had recently closed that was the consensus best of the people we asked and another that was made to sound like they preferred regulars over non-regulars. After looking in at our two choices we finally decided on Awashima.

When we walked in an elderly man was working behind the counter serving three people seated in front of him. The chef was in his seventies, the second-generation master of the shop. Considering it was a Monday night, the lack of customers didn’t seem too unusual. As we ordered our drinks, I noticed some aji swimming in a big fish tank at the end of the counter. So that was what I ordered first, aji tataki. The chef grabbed a net, fished one live aji out and proceeded to slice it up into sashimi, arranging the meat along the fish’s body resting on top of a bed of finely sliced daikon, the gills still moving, unaware that its life was over. My wife ordered some shirako, and I some large oysters. Notably absent from the menu was any sort of fish served shime style (vinegared), something neither of us had ever come across.

About that time the chef’s son showed up behind the counter and started speeding up the delivery. Within minutes, it seemed, we were served ma-dai, some chū-toro maguro, more aji, this time very large pieces on top of rice, and some ika. I could tell my wife was ready to leave, so I ordered a final round of tamago-yaki and negi-toro maki sushi. I was a bit surprised when our total came to ¥18,000, but when I saw the couple sitting near us were charged about the same I accepted it as the going rate.

As we walked back to our accommodation and the cakes that were waiting for us our conversation naturally was about how disappointing our meal had been. No shime saba or any other type of prepared fish. Just simple, fresh fish on top of lightly seasoned rice. Maybe this was the style of sushi local people preferred, but for my wife and I who are used to good Tokyo sushi, it was a disappointment.

The next morning, after a quick breakfast of toast and fruit, we checked out of our accommodation and headed up to the Atami Museum of Art (MOA), depositing our bags in a locker at Atami Station (one good thing about the Corona virus is because there are few tourists it is easy to find lockers!). The museum is high up on the hill behind the station, with fantastic views of the sea and the city. Luckily there is regular bus service.   One of the reasons we chose this particular week to visit Atami was to go to the museum to see the Red and White Ume Painted Folding Screen (Kōhaku baizu byōbu), a National Treasure painted in the 18^th century by Ogata Kōrin. As with similar seasonal works of art, this is on display when the real life ume trees are blossoming, although I will admit the real ones are much more vibrant to see. The MOA building itself is a stunning piece of architectural beauty, especially the entry which is a series of steep stairs (and escalators) rising up to a domed gallery colorfully lit by lights and prisms. It’s easy how this has become known as the Stairway to Heaven.

After checking out a very historically real replica of Hideyoshi’s golden tea room it was time to head back down towards the station to get some lunch before heading back to Tokyo. My wife called ahead to Soba Asada (蕎麦あさ田) to see if they were still open and still had noodles left. I had been to Soba Asada one or two times before and my wife even more times, which is why she had the number in her phone. They said they were almost out of soba and would be closing in fifteen minutes any way. We checked the bus schedule (too late) and looked at a taxi parked in front of the museum (someone beat us to it) and ended up walking down the hill to the restaurant, arriving just in time.

We sat at one of the few tables in the restaurant and started ordering. First a large bottle of Heartland beers, the tamagoyaki, the tenpura moriawase (assorted tenpura), and for soba, the kurumi dare (grated walnut dipping sauce) soba, the shop’s specialty. It was just what we needed and probably the best meal we ate on this trip. The staff, what I believe are a married couple who I remember seeing before (the Mr. does the cooking while the wife runs the front), plus two younger women, were getting things cleaned up as we were eating so we didn’t want to linger for any longer than necessary. Even so, it was a nice and relaxing meal. And we finished with plenty of time to catch a shinkansen back to Tokyo.

Next time we go I want to try fishing, something I have never done in Japan. Until then…