I’ve been searching the forums for destinations outside the main city’s in the main land.
I want to find a destination more on the coast and do possibly a fishing trip or costal experience with hiking mountains and ocean all in one. (A couple day stay is preferrd)
Any suggestions or tips what to search for? Somewhere accessible with a JR rail pass would be bonus. The further out you get the harder it gets for English speaking tourists.
Estimated travel will be End of April beginning of May prior to the holiday for locals.
4 comments
How about Oshima island? Not a JR Rail Pass location, but ticks your other boxes.
You can do both coastal and mountainous stuff in Kochi, Tokushima, etc. (really, most of shikoku). Good for that time of year, but I’d recommend flying and renting a car. JR pass travel would be highly inefficient.
I went to Dogashima on the west side of Izu. It was pretty awesome with some fun little hikes all around. You can take the shinkansen to Mishima station then figure it out from there. I booked an Italian ‘Ryokan’ style hotel (sounds weird but 10/10) that had a free shuttle service to and from Mishima station. The driver didn’t speak much English, but was very into stopping and showing us all the sights along the way. Literally all the locals we met were incredibly nice and wanted to chat even with the language barrier. We ate at a sushi restaurant the first night and ended up eating an amazing 3,000 yen omakase and became friends with everyone there. Got a lot of tips from the owner on hiking spots.
Dogashima was great for geo spots too. Honestly, we went because a few spots are featured in the anime Yuru Camp and they looked cool. It’s on the coast and has a natural land bridge that appears during low tide (Tombolo Land Bridge) out to a few islands that you can hike to. It also has a few sea caves to explore from above, or you can book a cheap boat tour from the park
I’ve heard good things about the east side of Izu as well, and I know they have a rail system that goes down most of that side of the coast, but I think it’s more popular. Haven’t been to that side yet.
I went to Mount Daisen in Tottori prefecture a few years ago and it was pretty nice. The area is really remote but accessible by little JR trains that run quite infrequently. Our guesthouse was in one of the towns along the coastline (I think it was Nawa or Daisenguchi). There weren’t any restaurants, only a small supermarket. Around 30-40 minutes by bus to the trailhead as far as I can remember.