Omaezaki Japan Shizuoka
16
Cruises availables
At departure or passage at this port
Holland America Line (6 Cruises)
Frequently Asked Questions
A rural, maritime Japan with no famous monument. This cape jutting between Suruga Bay and the Enshu Sea packs a nineteenth-century lighthouse, the country's largest expanse of tea fields and a fish market into less than an hour's drive, with Mount Fuji as a backdrop on clear days.
Yes, it is one of the few lighthouses in Japan you can go up. The spiral staircase opens onto a circular gallery with the Pacific on one side and Suruga Bay on the other. Expect wind: it almost always blows at the cape.
Richard Henry Brunton, the Scottish engineer that Meiji-era Japan hired to light its coasts. Commissioned in 1874, its white stone tower has withstood Pacific typhoons for a century and a half.
On a clear day, yes: its outline floats to the north above the hills, visible from both the lighthouse gallery and the tea plateau. Autumn and winter offer the best odds. A hazy sky makes it disappear entirely, which is worth knowing before building your day around it.
Yes, about thirty minutes inland on the Makinohara plateau. Rows of tea bushes clipped to a line ripple to the horizon, broken up by frost-protection fans on pylons. Shizuoka produces close to half of all Japanese tea.
You taste sencha and, in spring, the freshly picked new tea. Some houses let visitors put on the traditional tea-pickers' outfit for a photo among the rows, and green tea ice cream finishes the stop.
At the fish market next to the quays. Pacific bonito rules here, seared over a flame and served on a bed of rice, alongside tiny shirasu, the translucent whitebait eaten raw or barely blanched. You eat at the counter, no fuss and no English.
The coast to the east lines up long dark beaches backed by pine-planted dunes, including those at Hamaoka. You walk facing the Pacific, often alone but for a few surf casters. This is a coast for wind and walking rather than for easy swimming.
In summer, loggerhead turtles come ashore to nest on some beaches along this coast. Sensitive stretches are signposted and must be respected. It is not an organised attraction but a lucky encounter when it happens.
No, and the port makes no apology for it. There is no famous temple and no skyline here. The day comes down to simple things: a lighthouse, tea, fish, wind. Many passengers realise on the gangway home that they have just had their most Japanese day.
