Monkeys!!!!!

After our second and final night at the ryokan, we had a similar breakfast at 7:30 – fish, pickles and tofu – but with a cooked egg this time, which was a welcome change from yesterday’s raw one.

I wanted to visit Monkey Bay, which was only about a 15-minute drive up the coast from the ryokan. The owner warned us not to show our teeth or make eye contact with the monkeys, as they’ve been known to attack people. We rolled the windows up and locked the doors as we drove down to the bay, spotting our first monkeys along the way.

The bay itself wasn’t all that exciting, and with a ¥1,000 entry fee just to get in, we decided we were happy seeing the monkeys in the car park and headed back up the switchback road towards Shimoda, where we’d be staying that night.

The drive took about an hour to Shirahama Beach, which is definitely one of the better beaches I’ve been to in Japan. Lots of people were out surfing, but there were also calmer waters near the rocks, which meant I could finally use my mask and snorkel to check out some of the fish. We think we saw some baby pufferfish, but I’m obviously not an expert – they could have been anything, really.

After an hour or so at the beach, we headed into Shimoda, which turned out to be a really nice town – a mix of historical significance (being where Japan signed its first trade deal with the U.S.) and more modern touches like vintage shops, along with more of the sea cucumber (namako-kabe) wall designs on the buildings. We walked around for a couple of hours, including along Perry Road, named after Admiral Perry who signed the 1854 treaty.

I then dropped Seb and Iman off at their hotel before heading to Yamato Transport to try and ship my ski bag to the airport for Seb to take home. Frustratingly, they wouldn’t accept it, saying it was too big – even though I’ve used the exact same bag with them before.

I returned to their hotel to shower before dinner, and by complete chance – literally two minutes up the road from the hotel – I drove past Louis, a friend from home who’s studying in Tokyo this year. He’d booked a last-minute trip to Izu and just happened to be in the exact same place as us – a crazy coincidence.

We agreed to go for dinner in Shimoda and ended up eating at a Chinese place before getting a taxi back to the hotel and calling it a night.