Atami

Atami is a hot spring resort city on the eastern shoulder of the Izu Peninsula, stacked up steep hills above a bay southwest of Tokyo. It boomed as the capital's honeymoon getaway in the postwar decades, and its onsen hotels and retro shopping streets still carry that seaside-resort feel.

Hotels with ocean-view baths rise above Atami Sun Beach, and the MOA Museum of Art shows celebrated Japanese works, including screens by Ogata Korin, from a hilltop above the bay. Kinomiya Shrine shelters a camphor tree said to be more than two thousand years old, its huge trunk wrapped in rope.

The Atami-zakura along the Itokawa River open in January, among the earliest cherry blossoms in Japan, and fireworks light the bay on scheduled nights through the year. The shinkansen makes Atami one of the quickest onsen escapes from Tokyo, which keeps weekends lively; midweek stays are calmer.