The family home in Izu may have been the base for my Golden Week holidays this year (over two months ago now!) but I didn’t actually spend so much time there. After just a night there I went off on my own to spend a few days in Osaka, Kyoto and Nagoya whilst my wife was back in Tokyo working for a couple of days.

After such a busy and hectic schedule in the first half of the holidays I was longing for a day or two of doing nothing and I got my wish. However, one day was later spent at Lake Ippeki-ko with my wife, sister-in-law, nephew, mother-in-law and Momiji. I blogged about this place back in January but it really was much prettier in the sunshine with clear blue skies above. I even went out on a pedalo which I haven’t done for decades!

Despite having seen it dozens of times, one can never get tired of seeing the iconic and spiritual Mount Fuji and it was often visible from our base. The photo below may not be the best sighting of it but it was the only one I captured.

My nephew is really into ‘Kamen Rider‘ (live action Japanese super-hero TV series) and I long lost count of how many episodes he watched. Still, it kept him quiet and saved us from having to play with him. He gets all the attention when he’s not watching the TV so it did mean more time to focus on Momiji!

My wife and I went to Kawana beach late in the afternoon one day. It’s not exactly made up of white sand, palm trees and turquoise water but it was nice enough as the sun started to disappear late afternoon one day.

On our final night in Izu we actually went out for dinner which is quite rare when we go there. We went to a local fish restaurant and ate some very fresh sashimi not that I can ever really tell the difference between such things. The other thing of note were posters around the place advertising something called Saba Sonic which may or may not be a pun on the Summer Sonic music festivals which take place in Chiba and Osaka each August.

Click here to read ‘Tokyo Daytripper: Hakone-yumoto’