Atami is where Tokyo comes to forget about Tokyo. It is a hot-spring resort stacked up a steep hillside above Sagami Bay, with concrete hotels, narrow lanes, a small harbour and a long curve of beach, and it has the happy, slightly faded air of a seaside town that was fashionable in the 1960s. The city has fewer than forty-five thousand people, but it feels bigger, because everything is vertical and every street seems to have a view of the water.
Atami has a place in popular culture, too. On the seafront, a statue of a man kicking a woman recalls a scene from the Meiji-era novel Konjiki Yasha, and every Japanese person seems to know the story. There are fireworks over the bay on a number of nights across the year, the town has a castle, a modern reconstruction on the hill, and the plum garden blooms in February, early enough to make the resort worth a winter day trip.
For riders, Atami is a base. It is the doorway to the Izu Peninsula and to the Hakone region, with the coast road toward Itō running south on the one side and the toll roads up to Hakone leading north-west on the other. Fuel is easy in town and on the outskirts, which is just what you need before heading into the hills, where stations are fewer and the roads are long. The streets in town are steep, with sharp turns and a lot of one-way sections, so take it slowly, and park where it is legal, since Japanese enforcement is strict.
The seafront is the right place for a pause. The beach promenade is wide and calm, and cafes around the harbour serve fresh seafood, especially horse mackerel and dried fish, which Atami is known for. An early start makes the best of the day: the morning light on the water is lovely, and the coast road is quieter before the day-trippers arrive.