- Hey fellow explorers,
we're gonna be taking you around Atami, Japan
for two days and two nights.
We're standing here in front of Atami Station,
which is probably how most people get here by the JR train.
But that's not how we got here.
We drove here from Haneda Airport.
It's about a two hour drive, super scenic.
And this town is known for hot springs,
it's known for food, it's known for shopping,
it's known for pudding!
And so we're gonna check out all that.
It's also known as the Naples of Italy.
So we're gonna check out
is it really the Naples of Italy of Japan?
We'll see.
So for our first meal in Atami,
we stop by Osakana Shokudo
for their luxury seafood bowl right here.
Doesn't this look luxurious?
No, she doesn't think it looks luxurious
'cause she doesn't like sashimi.
But this is some local sashimi, sea urchin, and salmon roe.
And this place, super lively and a super awesome place.
But this looks delicious.
About 4,000 yen, or about $30 US.
(chomping)
OC Girl got the rice bowl with their local fish.
And you eat this in three different ways.
First you pour some soy sauce on.
Then they've got another sauce on.
And then you call them for a third time,
and then they put something special on it.
(water gurgling)
So that sashimi was super delicious.
And they've got a few branches in Atami,
but only one's open for dinner.
It's the one in Ginza, Atami Ginza.
And if you wanna eat there,
get there at five when they open
otherwise the lines are really busy.
So we were driving here, we parked our car,
and I was trying to figure out how to pay.
And I wanted to pay when we parked, and it didn't work
because it was zero yen when we parked.
The way you pay for parking in these lots,
they're like, I'm gonna call it the honor system.
And then you park here, and it has a camera.
And then you come over to this machine,
you put your space number in,
and then it says you owe 800 yen to leave.
Neat.
(upbeat music)
(change clinking)
And of course, it makes change.
And that blinking green light behind the car,
that tells us we paid and we're cool to go.
Oh, and apparently you've only got five minutes to leave,
so we better get going.
(dynamic music)
Well so after that mountain of sushi,
we came and checked into our hotel,
the Hoshino Resorts Risonare Atami Hotel.
Which honestly, this hotel was one of the reasons
why we came here 'cause we looked at it online
and it looked really amazing.
And it is.
It's a Japanese style room that has tatami mats right here.
Our daughter has claimed this as her own.
It came with these sets of toys on the bed right here.
I wanna show you this
'cause they knew we had a three-year-old checking in.
They've put this like bed rail
so that she can sleep on the side and not fall off.
And look at this bed, it is bigger
than a king size bed, for sure.
I'm gonna show you some of the other amazing
kids-friendly features.
And on the ninth floor, just below the lobby,
is the activity lounge.
Basically the second lobby entirely made for kids,
where it's totally cool to climb on that.
And look at this!
Wow, look at this cool seat.
Just next to that activity space,
in what looks like it used to probably be a hotel bar,
is now a 24 hour co-working space,
complete with a complimentary coffee machine.
And up on the 11th floor is a cafe and beach.
This is like indoors,
and there's sand shipped in from Australia.
And there's places you can eat.
You can get coffee, snacks, and ice cream
for like 500 yen for a little gelato.
But it's a pretty neat spot,
open to kids until nine, the last hour of the day
only for older than 12.
(bright music)
Good morning.
We started our second day
with the amazing breakfast buffet at this hotel.
And did I tell you, it's so kids-friendly.
They even have bibs for the kids,
and little mugs, and special trays.
It's awesome.
Cooked to order omelets, seafood.
This is an amazing breakfast buffet.
And of course, pudding for breakfast.
(bright music)
So after that delicious breakfast,
we took a climb up to the hotel's tree house.
It's called Kusu Kusu.
Yes, the hotel has a tree house.
Yes, it's free to come up.
We are in it right now.
They give kids free outfits to wear
to go into the tree house.
And, 'cause they want you to take pictures when you're here,
they even have a tripod set up so you can take pictures,
which I think is pretty neat.
Oh, that's my phone on the tripod, that wasn't here.
And for the bigger kids, down in the forest,
there's a ropes course and a zip line.
That one costs some money.
The second floor, in addition to being home
to the public bath, is home to the nursery,
with a couple of ball pits, cribs,
things to ride, little basketballs,
tents, and even more toys here on the side.
And there's even little baby sinks.
And a little baby bathroom.
(bright music)
But the picture that I saw online,
and I knew I had to book this hotel,
was this ball pit that looks out on the ocean.
This is the most amazing ball pit ever.
Don't you think so?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, it's even got a little chair in the ball pit.
(bright music)
After morning fun time,
it's time for some dessert, before lunch.
That's right.
Now in Atami, there's this famous pudding shop.
And this is the dessert to get.
It comes in like six different flavors.
They had cherry blossom flavor, caramel flavor.
This is strawberry flavor.
It comes in a nice glass container.
And some strawberry stuff to put on top.
Let's go ahead and open up.
All right, it's got a cow on top.
We'll open that up.
It has another lid on top.
All right.
And now we've got pudding.
We could put the sauce on top.
But, in Japan, they often really like to say
try it first before the sauce.
Let's try this strawberry pudding.
Mm. - My turn.
- It's really smooth, it's really creamy.
Let's see what the princess thinks.
Good?
Good.
Two thumbs up?
Two thumbs up.
Now that pudding shop is right along
Atami's covered shopping street.
This is right out in front of the JR Atami station,
which by the way, you can take the shinkansen,
or the bullet train into here.
If you got the JR Pass
you can ride the Kodama train into this station.
All right, so this little shopping street
has a lot of different restaurants on it,
and shops, pretty neat.
It's not super long,
but it connects to the same street where we had
the sushi restaurant last night for dinner.
And then will eventually take you down to the water.
Oh, there's actually two of these covered shopping streets,
so make sure you explore both of them.
They both end up right at JR Station.
But you'll find tons of restaurants
advertising similar looking sashimi bowls
as we had last night.
(dynamic music)
We enjoyed our seafood bowls so much last night
that we decided to have them again today.
This one, 4,000 yen, about $30.
This one, much cheaper.
1500 yen, or about $12 US.
And this one is definitely a much more vibrant location
right at the end of the shopping street.
Looking forward to digging into these, again.
All right, I forgot to show this to you last night.
And the last way to eat this is actually with some soup.
When you have few bites left
they bring you some fish soup to put into it.
And they love their fireworks here in Atami.
Apparently, a few times a year they've got fireworks.
And these pictures of fireworks are all over the town.
Literally everywhere you look.
Well, after wandering that shopping street
for a little while, we tuckered out our princess.
3:00 for us traveling, these are naps most days.
Just find a nice spot to duck into.
So where are we?
We are at Atami Milchee's, famous for their cheesecake.
This is cheesecake that looks like
it's in a pudding container.
Mm.
Quite a rich cheesecake.
It's good.
Probably the best cheesecake I've had
from a little milk bottle.
But this one, people wait around like an hour for this
because these only come out once every hour fresh.
This is their half-baked cheesecake.
And we waited about 15 minutes for it.
It's steamy and it is kind of half baked.
It's like a little bit runny.
Mm.
It's like creme brulee combined with a cheesecake.
Oh, and also kind of neat because this is an onsen town,
the food comes in a little wooden bath bucket
that you'd use to wash yourself here.
So I love that homage to where they are.
And the light too, everything here is onsen themed.
Oh by the way, in this town,
if you're not staying in an onsen hotel,
there's a foot bath that's for free near the train station.
When we were here it wasn't running
'cause they were having a problem with the water source.
But, I think in good times you can get your feet
nice and warm and wet there.
So after lunch we came over to Atami Castle.
And let me tell you,
it's a little bit of a mountain goat road to get up here.
This place is really high.
But I can see, looking at the view,
why they call this the Naples of Japan.
If you look out here, this view is really quite fantastic.
Although the houses don't quite look the same.
But yeah, we're really high up right now.
But the real reason we're here at all
isn't actually for the castle, it's for the cherry blossoms.
In the hilltop terrace right next to Atami Castle
there's a whole bunch of sakura trees.
We're a little past peak bloom,,
but they're still beautiful and still fun to run around.
Isn't that right?
Yeah, right.
A lot of people often ask me
whether they should rent a car when they come to Japan.
And we love renting a car when we come to Japan.
Particularly when we have a small one
we can carry all of her stuff with us.
But something kind of unique here
when you park in a pay parking lot,
they'll direct you what spot to park in.
Like at our hotel, we have parking spot number 11.
That's the parking spot we park in
when we come back, when we leave.
That spot is just for us.
And our spot here,
this one they directed us to park right there.
That white car that says 308 on the license plate.
By the way, you need to know your license plate to pay
at some pay parking lots around here.
A lot of the pay parking lots
if you don't pay when you come in
then you pay when you leave at a machine.
And we had to put our license plate in,
and then it told us how much we had to pay when we left.
Hmm.
We went to the Aeon Maxvalue supermarket.
And they have these neat shopping carts
that actually have a spot for kids to stand on in the back.
Anyway, our princess really enjoyed her new
mode of shopping, standing as she gets pushed around.
I thought it was also interesting at this supermarket
how small their cans of beer are.
Look at this.
This is a tiny can of Asahi for 98 yen, like 80 US cents.
(upbeat music)
So for dinner we decided just to make it easy
and come back to the hotel dinner buffet
here is 6,000 yen for adults.
But kids her age are free.
So that makes a pretty good deal.
And it's a really good buffet.
They've got like sashimi grade tuna,
they've got fresh grilled beef.
They got lots of things.
Everything under the sun here for dinner.
I think it's definitely worth the price, about $45 US.
And they got a lot of great food for kids too.
She loves curry and they have not just a curry for adults,
which is a little bit spicy,
but they specifically have curry for kids,
which is not spicy.
And it comes with bibs too.
I mean how many restaurants do you go to where you get bibs.
After dinner, it was time for a little play
in the ninth floor activity room again,
which is home to this amazing ball pit with the ocean view.
You can't see it at night.
But that buffet, it was really quite good in this hotel.
It's really quite amazing.
But, if you do decide to stay here,
just know it's really far from the town.
It's like 15 minutes up a pretty mountain goat type road.
If you don't have a car, they do have shuttles
that'll take you from the hotel,
down to the station and back again.
But I think this is definitely
the kind of place you wanna stay with a car.
(upbeat music)
All right, we're just about to
check out of the hotel in Atami.
The princess wanted me to turn the video on
so she could show you something.
One, two, three, jump!
Her favorite ball pit ever, with an ocean view.
All right, let's go check out the town.
- Let's go!
Let's see the town.
- The hotel staff told us we should
definitely check out the beach,
(Princess yelling)
so we can relax.
It's really nice that there's this indoor beach
in the hotel 'cause it's kind of a rainy, cold day.
I don't know if we can make it to the actual beach.
And I love how like soft this Australian sand is.
It's like super soft and light.
♪ Rain, rain go away ♪
♪ Come again another day ♪
Yeah, as it is, the weather forecast today
is rain that stops occasionally.
So, hope it doesn't rain that much on our parade.
But we sang the song, so I think we should be good.
One of the most classic things to do in Japan
on a rainy day is visit a shrine.
This is the Kinomiya Shrine.
There's a really neat heart of leaves right here
that the princess wanted to come in.
And she wanted to tell me that she loves me.
Thank you, Princess, for that.
Anyway, this shrine is home to the god of luck.
And there's a little cafe here
where you can get some drinks.
And, behind the shrine there is a 2,000 year old tree,
24 meters around.
And it is said that when you go around that tree one time
it extends your life by one year.
So we're gonna go around.
How many times do you wanna go around the tree?
- Um, one.
- We're gonna go around one time.
We don't wanna be too greedy.
Definitely the cafe's interesting
because it's the most modern looking cafe
I've ever seen in a shrine.
Drinks, reasonably priced, about 500 yen.
I mean it's a cool place to sit
and look at the shrine too.
(Princess chattering)
So on our way to the big tree,
one of the things I just like about the shrine
it's not like mega touristy, it's pretty chill.
And it just has a really neat, calming vibe to it, I'll say.
And I'm gonna get to live a year longer.
That's pretty cool.
Princess, look at that tree.
Isn't that big?
I mean, she's scared of the tree.
When I think of trees,
that tree definitely looks like it could be alive.
I'll see you on the other side.
So the most interesting thing I find about
walking around this tree is the entire tree
has wooden decking around it so many people walk around it.
And even though she loves my shoulders,
I think to make this work,
she has to walk to get that one more year.
And with this shrine,
it's not the fountain of youth, it's the tree of youth.
Get back around the tree.
I feel one year healthier already.
Don't you think I'm looking a little bit younger?
I think so.
Some people have told me in my last pictures that I have,
Chris, are you losing weight on this trip?
Maybe all the sushi
and the 40,000 steps a day are good for our health.
You wanna go around again?
One's enough.
At the top of the tree there's a little photo lookout
where you can take pictures.
There's another cafe where you can also
get ice cream and Japanese snacks.
And right over here, on a sunny day
there is a free natural lounge.
Please make yourself comfortable, the sign says.
It's even got heat lamps too.
This shrine's definitely one of the coolest things
that we've seen so far in Atami.
And if you feel like you've seen one shrine
and seen them all, I mean this one really is different
than a lot of other shrines.
The one thing that ruins the ambiance a little bit,
the bullet train passes by about every three minutes.
But you can actually see it from up there.
So it is a cool scene, but it disturbs the nature vibe.
We drove about 15 minutes to the south to South Atami.
And the princess said she wants to eat some pudding.
Pretty sure that's what they sell here.
And I think lunch too.
Let's go eat.
(upbeat music)
So we're upstairs in the pudding shop.
And this place is amazing.
And it's also super kids-friendly.
They have a whole kiddy play area.
And I have their cheese omelet rice right here.
Hot cheese.
This is melty hot cheese on top
of this kind of seasoned rice with an egg on top.
Gooey.
Mm.
And cheesy.
The princess here, she is eating Neapolitan pasta.
Take a look at this over here, it doesn't really
look like anything from Naples, but it's a Japanese classic.
Basically Japanese spaghetti
but with a few more things like egg and vegetables in it.
I think she just likes the noodles and the sauce
'cause she hasn't had it for probably about a month now.
Is it good?
Mm hm.
And they come with bibs too.
Pudding, pudding coming soon.
And then as a complimentary dessert
they gave us this cute little plate
with six pieces of pudding on it.
And it says Welcome to Atami Purin
something else that I can't read upside down,
but it has the cute cow on it.
And the grand finale is here.
The pudding on the souffle pancake.
These souffle pancakes are really Japanese specialties
that they're light and fluffy.
And not really designed for breakfast,
but designed for midday dessert.
Mm, it's a good fluffy pancake.
The pudding is a bit like a sort flan.
A very mild taste to it.
It also comes with some caramel
and some look like chocolate chips to go on top of it.
But what I thought was really interesting
sitting in this place, it's the music in the background
if you can hear it, it's like Italian music.
And so it turns out, Atami really is the Naples of Japan.
And if you wonder who these cute little hippos are
that's the mascot of this pudding shop.
And I just, I love Japanese and their characters.
Every shop creates its own little character.
I'll have to introduce him to Topher a little bit later.
- One, two, three.
- Well fellow explorers, if you enjoyed this video
then you might enjoy some more videos
from our Japan series where it's raining cherry blossoms,
'cause we're here right at the end of cherry blossom season.
We'll be visiting some other great cities
and seeing some other great cherry blossoms.
All right, as usual we won't say goodbye.
Find links on the screen or in the description below.
We'll see you there.
- Bye bye.