28 October 2026
Unabandoned resort town
Atami day trip
Day 2 out of 3 of using my Tokyo 3 day all areas train pass and as threatened, today I headed south east down the Izu Peninsula to Atami.
Atami is a symbol of 80s excess, when all of Japan got rich and built giant hotels on cliffs so business men could go on work trips with their secretaries. Then the global financial crisis happened, and business men had to go on trips without their secretaries and just soak their feet together in communal pools. Then they realised that is less fun than expected, even with beer, and so Atami crashed and burned. This happened to hundreds of similar resort towns across Japan, many are now dangerously abandoned and sliding down cliffs. But a strange thing happened in Atami.
Somehow Atami rose from the ashes, almost certainly because it is literally the closest such place to Tokyo, and so companies wanting to prove they are not broke when they probably are still put on the cheapest possible work trips for all their employees, and Atami got 100% of that business.
As for getting there and back, I took the limited express Odoriko which is 80 minutes each way and ordinarily would cost about 3,670 yen each way, but for me, included in my 16,000 yen train pass. It was a fairly ordinary train, photo of the inside below.
Atami station. The bullet train also comes here. I did not use it as this particular bullet train is not included in the Tokyo wide 3 day pass because it is run by JR West, even though Atami is firmly in JR East territory. Confusing? Always.
There are 2 covered shopping streets (SHOW TENG GAY) right by the station, both about half abandoned, which is actually pretty good, most are 90% empty!
Here is the other one.
Time for some view shots, nice sky, this is sunshine beach, or maybe sunset beach. It is not very enticing, there are a number of breakwaters just off screen.
Lots of yachts. There is a pleasure cruise and also various fishing charters if that floats you boat... see what I did there? AI could never do that!
I wandered all the way around to the end of the docks to find a way up the big hill, there is none! I had to double back a long way.
Finally I found a way up that is not the cable car. Photo as always provides proof that I did not take the cable car. I had to walk up a road without footpaths, others were doing the same.
There was one tunnel, which thankfully did have a footpath.
From the cliff top road, lots of great views to behold, with hotels perched on cliffs far from anywhere interesting conference attendees can easily escape to.
More cliffs and hotels.
Castle time! And this is the fakest castle in all of Japan. Not only is this not an old castle as it was built in the 1950's, but also there was never a castle here at any point in history, it only exists as a tourist attraction with no feuding samurai significance.
I skipped the castle and kept going up, on this a non hiking day.
The Atami Trick Art Museum, with dinosaur, was however very tempting, but my glee in not spending money outweighed my desire to not be able to take a photo of myself getting eaten by a shark.
Proof that I continued on past the castle. I like to provide proof of most, but not all things.
Views for days. An even more remote huge hotel on a cliff below.
While those mountains look enticing, there are roads along the top of them all and my Japanese hiking app shows almost no trails to speak of.
This establishment did not survive the financial crisis.
Time to head back into town. I was getting sun burnt!
There is apparently one famous shrine in Atami, this is not it.
The Atami Ginza has certainly seen better days.
And finally, as promised, a photo of the interior of the rather ordinary limited express Odoriko, same lighting system as yesterday telling you which seats are reserved and which are wide open. A lot of red lights this time. The ticket inspector checked my pass, asked me if I had a reservation, I did not, then he made one on his ipad, and the light above me turned from red to green.