Cape Tsurugi 剣崎

Why go to cape Tsurugi?

How to get there.

From Shinagawa station take the Keihin Kyuku Line Limited Express or the Rapid Limited Express going to Miosaki-guchi. The same train can be joined at Kawasaki or Yokohama and other express stops. Carriages are rarely full and for those used to the early morning sandwich cans on most suburban lines (particularly the southern Yokohama, Nambu and Chuo lines) you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Get out at Mirura-Kaigan station, the second from last stop. The trip will take between one hour and an hour and a quarter depending on the train, and all trains cost 830 yen.

There is only one exit at Mirura-Kaigan station. At the bottom of the steps turn slightly to your right towards a small kiosk under the tracks and you will see bus stop number 2. Board any bus on this stop for Tsugarugizaki (Cape Tsugari) and you will travel along the shoreline for about ten minutes until the counter (the electronic board thingy above the bus drivers head) changes to 250 yen. At this point ring the bell and get off at Togari. Check the tide timetables in the Japan times before going. Ideally you want high tide to be very early morning or very late in the evening. The hike is passable at high tide, but with some difficulty.

Start Walking.

This is really the start of the adventure. Continue in the direction the bus was traveling to the far end of this small beach. Immediately you'll be struck by the smell of the sea, the cry of the gulls and the fishing boats and nets along the shore. You may also get a strong smell of burning rubbish and notice many small concrete fireboxes cast into the sand. This is because local people, and some not so local, have discontinued the practice of dumping refuse into the bay and decided to burn it on the beach at Togari instead.

At the end of the bay the road veers off to the right and you can access the beach and small path at the top. Among the wildflowers common along this shore line are the tsuyukusa (spiderwort) in spring and tiny pink mamakonoshirinugui (polygonum Knotweed)  hototogisu (tricyrtis hirta a.k.a toad lily) white fujibakama (eupatorium thoroughwort) and yellow evening primrose in summer and late autumn. On a clear day you can see in detail the mountains of the Boso peninsula on the Chiba side of the bay.
Walking along the shoreline or path on top you’ll soon come to the Wakame cultivation tanks, a large structure that looks a little like an abandoned factory. In fact this is a modern commercialization of an old tradition in Tsurugi, the growing of Wakeme seaweed for sale in Tokyo. Many of the old concrete wells you may see along the shore are still in use by local farmers. The seaweed spores are grown in these tanks and transferred to the sea for maturation before being harvested a year latter. The industry still provided income supplement for many in the area.

Beyond the Cultivation tanks we pass around a low lying point into a small cove. At the end of this beach you’ll find a cave and further rock outcrop. During high tide you will need to enter the cave and exit via a small hole. Then descend into the sea and round a sharp rock before climbing up onto the point. In many guide books it states that there is a walkway here to make the point passable. In reality the walkway was built in the boom eighties and never replaced since. You can still see the concrete pylons cast into the rock, but no walkway. Between the cave exit and the nearest opportunity to climb up the rocks the sea looks particularly deep with a strong undertow. Actually as the waves recede a quick dash is possible with the sea at about waist height. Once scrambling off the rocks on the other side you should find the decaying signboard recounting the legend of Amezaki no orochi, a gigantic mythical snake feared by locals who practice a kind of ‘quiet’ living in the area to avoid disturbing the monster.

This beach is popular with fisherman who catch a surprising amount of fish off these rocks. Depending on the prevailing weather conditions, time of year etc, you will start to notice the garbage piling up on the beach (if you haven’t already). This is after all the mouth of a bay that services 34 million people, and perhaps it is more surprising that the coastline isn’t more polluted and contaminated. Tokyoites create an amazing amount of garbage, which unlike bigger polluters such as West Coast Americans, consists of non-perishable plastics. Flotsam is, for some aesthetic reason, beautiful even when it’s fashioned from inorganic plastic waste. Given that some 34 million people live around Tokyo Bay, it’s not so surprising to find waste float out into the blue yonder. After all, each one of Tokyo’s residence produce more than a kilogram of general waste each and every day thanks partly to the fascination with wrapping. Most of inland Tokyo is connected by canals and rivers with the bay and this is where some of the more buoyant refuse is discharged out to sea. (If you’ve ever wondered why the Kanto plain is dotted with so many tall thin chimney stacks, it is because official government policy has been to burn refuse in low temperature (850c) incinerators. The total number of incinerators operated by individual wards is now not known by the central government. It is said around 10,000 or 20,000, but no exact data exists. Given Japan’s PCB problem low temperature incinerators are held in suspicion by many environmental groups).
Most plastics turn out not to be biodegradable. The majority of Tokyo’s waste is photo degradable meaning, not that sunlight will break it down but, that over the long-term sunlight will break down material into smaller and smaller pieces, but it will remain plastic. Eventually waste dissolves into single molecules of plastic polymer that float around in the sea and air.

Japan, along with many Pacific Rim countries has been discharging plastic waste for sixty years. Even the individual molecules of plastic are still too tough for most anything — even such indiscriminate consumers as bacteria — to digest. And for the past six decades or so, this waste has made its way into the Pacific Ocean, large and small, fragmenting and accumulating as a kind of swirling sewer in the North Pacific subtropical gyre, an area known as the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch.

If you jumped into the ocean about here you’d float about 14,000 nautical miles — across the North Pacific Ocean northeast of Hawaii and the down north American coast to California coast, then back out past southwest Hawaii, toward Vietnam and the Philippines, then back up to Japan to where you started. The voyage would last approximately six years. If you were lucky enough to reach the Pacific Northwest coast during winter, the Davidson current might carry you north to Alaska, where the Alaska Stream would push you into the Bering Sea and through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean. With any luck, you'd surf the waves past Iceland and wind up bobbing in the North Atlantic. A more likely scenario is that you'd continue riding the gyre, slipping south toward California for another go-round. If you were unlucky you’d get stuck in the Garbage Patch: trash purgatory.

Take a bit of bakelite marked "VP-101" found in the stomach of a dead Laysan albatross chick along with cigarette lighters, bottle caps and hundreds of other pieces of plastic. Curtis C. Ebbesmeyer helped confirm that "VP-101" was likely a Bakelite tag for a U.S. Navy patrol squadron during World War II, and could, indeed, have floated in the ocean for 60 years before the albatross swallowed it.
Like the Sargasso Sea in the north Atlantic the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is a dead sea. Fishermen have never purposely sailed there as the lack of nutrients deny even plankton a living and sailors dread the lack of trade winds (the doldrums). Old as the wind and ocean, the Garbage Patch is a natural phenomenon. For millennia, flotsam and jetsam has accumulated there. What's new is that it's now home to non-biodegradable plastic trash that stretches about twice the size of Texas. If Climate change stirs the Gyre, the debris may spill out like an overflowing lavatory, congesting the southern beaches with plastic refuse Tokyoites thought long since disposed of.

Having given plenty of thought to the issue of pollution and human existence we can continue walking along the beach. Eventually you’ll come to another headland where small fields have recently been carved out of the headland. You have the choice of two possible routes, staying with the shoreline and rounding another headland until you reach Cape Tsurugi harbor or alternatively, walking slightly inland, through a small valley of daikon cultivation and up to a small flat plain with a good view across to the Boso peninsula.
This area supplies the majority of Tokyo’s daikon requirements, which any resident will tell you is considerable. The soil is a mixture of deep alluvia from volcanic eruptions layered over alkali basaltic rock and is extremely productive. You may notice most of the farmers are elderly, the lifestyle rejected by many younger Japanese.
Along the main road, or walking around the shoreline it is only about 30 minutes to Cape Tsurugi harbor. The Lighthouse is easily visible from here. There are several shortcuts but the most reliable route is to follow the main road which takes about 30 minutes.
The light house was Japan's first western style lighthouse and construction is said to date from 1869. Although there is plenty of evidence the main structure has been refurnished over the years it is very much as originally built. A plaque testifies that the point was fist illuminated on the 1st march 1871, and much of the original iron work appears to be imported. Looking out over the Tsurugi straight to the Boso peninsula you can see the ships plying in and out of Tokyo bay. Amazingly many of these mammoths are over fifty thousand tones.

From Cape Tsurugi Lighthouse to Jo island will take approximately 3 hours not including a stop for lunch. Leaving the Lighthouse, stick with the narrow lane back out to the main Miurakaigan  - Misakiguchi road. At the junction of the lane and road you’ll see a bus stop. Don’t cheat here and get on the bus, turn right and keep walking. You walk down for a while and then under a bridge before coming to Ena.
Luckily Ena has one of the best seafood restaurants on the whole Miura peninsula (when would Tokyonodoko ever let you down?) and here is our spot for lunch. Just before entering Ena turn right into a small lane that services several boatyards. Keep walking until you come to the large building at the end of the track. This is the Ena restaurant. The menu is dominated by local produce naturally and it”s all good. It is possible to simple buy coffee and sit on the deck to watch the sea, but the set menus start from a thousand and really this is not an experience to miss. For two thousand yen you can really treat yourself.
The walk to Jo island is now about two and a half hours. Climbing out of Ena you pass through a new tunnel and the noise is, well, frightening. However, once out of the tunnel the view opens up and Mt. Fuji dominants the horizon. There is a wind farm further along which offers a good photo op.

Another hour and you come to Misaki harbor fronting Jo Shima. Misaki has some incredible seafood restaurants that are worth visiting for dinner. Jo shima is reachable by the huge elevated concrete bridge. The view from on top is spectacular.  After crossing the bridge, take the path immediately to the right, making your way through the maze of tracks to the dirt road out to the headland on the pacific side of the island. Steps lead down to a beach and this is a pleasant place to watch the sun go down.

Returning to Tokyo is via Misaki harbor where there are regular buses to Miosaki-guchi (390 yen) and the train back to Tokyo.