Monday, May 10, 2010

A day trip from Numazu to Heda

Heda is a small town on the west coast of the Izu Peninsula. It has a "real" beach, which is its main attraction, and a few other features to keep the tourists coming. A small onsen, a smattering of temples, giant crabs, a museum of... something which I forget now.

We just spent the day walking around. The first hour was spent wandering the streets, stopping to check out the outside of the onsen (boring) and watch a mother and two kids feeding koi (those gigantic goldfish) in one of the local canals. Then we walked all around the bay to the beach area and spent the rest of our time hanging around there, and walking around the head of the bay too.

Heda is an isolated place that's apparently quite difficult to get to. It's only 28km from Numazu by road, but it's a very narrow and winding road so it'll take you at least an hour and probably longer if you get stuck behind someone slow. (Apparently it takes five hours to get to from Tokyo in the peak of summer.) We went by ferry; the "White Marine" departs from the northwest end of the Numazu port, takes half an hour and costs 2000 yen one-way. So it's pricey, but has some novelty value and quite spectacular scenery along the way.

Don't ask me how those people got to those rocks, but I think they were still there on our way back in the afternoon.

This beach gets packed out with people in summer. If it had been a clear day, you'd be able to see Mt Fuji in the background of this photo.

Cos she's a cutie.


Cos the pictures amuse me.

*****     *****     *****
The ferry timetable is hard to find on the internet; even harder to find in English. Your best bet is probably to just head down to the ticket office at the port (the room at the end of the dinky little building across and up the road a bit from the Fishmarket Taproom and Baird Brewery), or you could probably ask at the Taproom itself, since everybody speaks English there. We took the 9:00 a.m. ferry; the next one was at 11:00 a.m., but that was the timetable for spring and summer. It varies throughout the year. Going back, we took the last ferry at 3:15 p.m.

1 comment:

Clare said...

Sounds like a great little trip.
I love that you take pics that are funny or amusing, I do that too.