Shimoda

They sing April in Paris….

But April in Tokyo is actually very very busy, with cruises to prepare, meetings, poster presentations, and various projects to finish 'by tomorrow'! So it was quite lucky that the hotel I had booked many weeks ago, when my calendar was still empty, happened to fall right at the end of one of the busiest weeks!

Trip was planned to be 100% relaxation, with sun, beach, and huge dinners, and it totally lived up to it’s calling.

The small village where my hotel was.

The huge 'crab special' dinner, followed by an equally large breakfast.

Early on Saturday morning I set out on an Odoriko express from Yokohama to Izukyu-Shimoda, at the tip of Izu peninsula, between Sagami and Suruga Bays. Just 2 hours away from Oppama on the express train, you could easily have been on the other side of the world, so different was the countryside.

Although, naturally, a volcanic island, one tends to forget that on Miura peninsula, as most of the outcrops are sedimentary or clay. In Shimoda, it is basalt, and basalt that had clearly been ejected from a volcano rather forcibly, and not given much of a chance to flow and smooth out. And, in fact, the very tall and steep hills surrounding the city are no more than a collection of volcanic plugs: the magma that consolidated in the volcano chimney now standing exposed after the rest of the volcano has eroded away.

As well as being a little geological treasure, Shimoda is also a historical heritage spot, where you can walk down charming, old 19^th-century cobbled streets,

... and admire models of Commodore Perry’s ‘Black Ships’ chugging around the bay.

But what better, on a warm, sunny spring day than to simply sit down in the shade of a sakura tree and watch the hundreds of birds and insects out and about in the blossoms?