Above Atami bay, below the stars, between Hakone and the Izu coast.
A summer afternoon: a lounger, a laptop, the sea filling the whole view. Work for an hour, or don't.
The deck from end to end, open to the sky, and the bay curving round towards Atami.
Sunset from the upper deck. For ten minutes the cloud catches fire and the bay turns to copper, and the only people watching are the ones you came with.
The same evening from the deck below: violet overhead, then a line of fire laid along the coast to Atami.
Blue hour in the living room. The lamps come on, the old brick glows, and beyond the long glass the bay turns to evening blue.
The same hour from inside: the bay going violet beyond the living-room glass, the hills turning to shadow.
About fifteen nights a year Atami sends fireworks up over the bay, and the hills around it throw the sound straight back.Over Atami's port and marina, from the hillside and the waterfront in town
Chrysanthemums of pink and white over the port, the whole town lit beneath them. On show nights your host tells you where to stand, and when to set off.Over Atami's port, from the hillside in town
Night from the upper deck: Atami's lights strung along the shore, a last glow on the horizon, and the first stars over the water.
Turn round to the house: the wall lamps throw their light across the boards, the town goes quiet below, and the stars come out over the hill.
A summer afternoon: a lounger, a laptop, the sea filling the whole view. Work for an hour, or don't.
The deck from end to end, open to the sky, and the bay curving round towards Atami.
Sunset from the upper deck. For ten minutes the cloud catches fire and the bay turns to copper, and the only people watching are the ones you came with.
The same evening from the deck below: violet overhead, then a line of fire laid along the coast to Atami.
Blue hour in the living room. The lamps come on, the old brick glows, and beyond the long glass the bay turns to evening blue.
The same hour from inside: the bay going violet beyond the living-room glass, the hills turning to shadow.
About fifteen nights a year Atami sends fireworks up over the bay, and the hills around it throw the sound straight back.Over Atami's port and marina, from the hillside and the waterfront in town
Chrysanthemums of pink and white over the port, the whole town lit beneath them. On show nights your host tells you where to stand, and when to set off.Over Atami's port, from the hillside in town
Night from the upper deck: Atami's lights strung along the shore, a last glow on the horizon, and the first stars over the water.
Turn round to the house: the wall lamps throw their light across the boards, the town goes quiet below, and the stars come out over the hill.
Our lowest price is here, with no booking fee.
The register
Atami Umihoshi熱海海星
In the Showa years, Atami was where Japan came on honeymoon, for the hot springs and the lights round the bay. This house looks down on that view from high on the hill, quiet and private: the bay and Hatsushima by day, the town's lights and the stars after dark. Tokyo is 40 to 50 minutes away by shinkansen, and Hakone is just over the hill. Your host travelled to more than forty of Japan's prefectures before choosing to live here, and plans your days in Atami and Hakone around what you love, in English or Japanese.
Three things worth knowing
Designed by a photographer as a home and gallery studio, the house stands high on the hills of Atami, between the Hakone mountains and the Izu peninsula. From the living room, the decks and the bath, the bay is right in front of you: a panorama of Sagami Bay from the Hakone hills to Hatsushima by day, the town's lights and the stars after dark. We spent more than eight months making it ready with local craftsmen, keeping the red brick and the walnut and turning the old studio into a room of hinoki and tatami.
Pick the room you like best. Take the whole ground floor for family or friends. Or take the house from top to bottom.
01一室から
¥19,800 a guest a night (¥18,000 + tax)
Any of the three rooms is made up for you, and the living room, the island kitchen, the deck, the outdoor Jacuzzi and the garden come with it. Room C, at the top of the house, opens onto the upper deck.
Room A · Hinoki
17.4 m² · tatami, about 10 jō · sleeps up to 5 on futons or mattresses · its own vanity corner
New tatami of Ryukyu rush, hinoki all round, an engawa to the garden and an alcove where an Edo-period scroll hangs above pottery from Sado Island, a gift. Open the door and the bay looks back down the length of the walnut table.
¥18,000+ tax
a guest a night · ¥19,800 with tax
Two guests: ¥39,600 a night (¥36,000 + tax)
Room B · Renga
12.6 m² · split-level · a double bed and futons for two · sleeps up to 4 · its own toilet on whole-floor stays
Up a few steps from the living room: an old brick wall, a walnut platform, a reading lamp over two armchairs, and still lifes of flowers on the wall. Morning sun comes in from the front garden first.
¥18,000+ tax
a guest a night · ¥19,800 with tax
Two guests: ¥39,600 a night (¥36,000 + tax)
Room C · Sora
10.8 m² · upstairs · a double bed, a desk, futons for two · sleeps up to 4 · opens onto the upper deck
The top of the house. Two tall black-framed doors open onto the deck and the whole bay; a linen lamp, prints leaning on the wall, a desk for the morning. Hatsushima on the water, the hills changing colour with the season.
¥18,000+ tax
a guest a night · ¥19,800 with tax
Two guests: ¥39,600 a night (¥36,000 + tax)
021階貸切
Best for up to six · sleeps up to eight
Both bedrooms, Room A and Room B, and the whole ground floor around them. Cook together at the island, eat at the walnut table with the garden in the glass, and take the outdoor Jacuzzi two at a time as the sun goes. Upstairs, the ocean-view bath is yours at the hours we agree when you arrive. Your host lives on the floor above: close enough to help, quiet enough that you'll forget.
Yours for the stay
Not included: Room C, the sauna, the upper deck
03一棟貸切
Best for nine or ten · yours for any party
Everything, upstairs and down: three bedrooms, the ocean-view bath whenever you like, the sauna for two beside it, and the upper deck where Hatsushima floats on the water by day and the town's lights trace the bay at night. Room C, Sora, opens straight onto that deck. On full-house nights your host stays on the neighbouring plot, a minute away, reachable from nine in the morning until midnight and at any hour in an emergency.
Yours for the stay
Nothing is held back: every room, upstairs and down, is yours.
¥95,000+ tax
Seven or eight of you? The whole floor sleeps eight. If you'd like Room C, the sauna and the upper deck too, take the full house.
Tax included; the house's own price before tax in brackets.
Prices are tax included. Golden Week, Obon and New Year nights are 10% more, and the price for your dates is shown in full before you pay. Long stays: 25% off from five nights, 30% off from seven. Members save from 2% to 20%. Only one discount applies, always the best one. Cleaning ¥1,650 a stay (¥1,500 + tax). Atami's lodging tax, ¥200 per guest per night, is added separately; children of primary-school age and younger don't pay it. Fireworks nights cost the same as any other.
The house sits halfway between Hakone's mountains and the Izu coast, which makes it the best kind of base: an hour's drive puts you on a cliff above the open Pacific, in a shrine older than the shoguns, or at a sushi counter that sells out by noon. These are the days we plan for our own guests. Turn a card for the story; add a paid one to your stay and the stay costs 10% less.
1.5–2 hours
A fireworks evening
About fifteen nights a year the bay lights up. Watch from the deck, glass in hand, or go down to the water with your host and feel the finale.
About 9 hours
West Izu: the Dougashima coast
White tuff cliffs the locals keep for themselves, a low-tide walk to Sanshiro-jima, a boat into a sea cave open to the sky, and sunset behind the islands.
About 6 hours
Atami's shrines and the Jogasaki coast
A camphor over 2,000 years old, said to add a year to your life, 837 steps up from a cave spring, and a bridge over lava cliffs.
About 7 hours
Mishima and Mt. Fuji
Fuji ahead all day: a 400-metre footbridge over the valley, tea rows running up to the mountain, the shrine where Yoritomo prayed, and Suruga Bay at sunset.
About 30 minutes
Ume picking, and the umeshu story
In June the plum by the deck hangs heavy with fruit. Pick a few with your host, hear how the house makes its umeshu, and take the recipe home.
5–6 hours
A dawn boat, your own catch
Leave harbour at sunrise on a registered boat, reel in sea bream with Fuji small and white behind you, then cook your catch yourselves in the island kitchen.
1.5–2 hours a meal
Tables we book for our own family
Kinmedai simmered sweet in soy, a sushi counter that sells out, himono grilled over charcoal facing the sea: the tables we book for our own family.
About 4 hours
Jogasaki at dusk
Black lava cliffs from a 4,000-year-old eruption, a cliff path past an old cannon battery, a bridge 23 metres over the waves, and the sky going pink over Oshima.
Every day out we offer, filed the way we think about them.
Where the eight cards above go, west to east, with the house near Atami.
熱海 観光券
Atami · Excursion tickets
Twelve months on this coast: what flowers, what's on, and the nights the fireworks go up. Dates come from the organisers, and we update them as they're announced.
November
霜月しもつき
The nights come early: on clear evenings, stars over the upper deck by six.
Days of the month
Dates are the organisers' plans and can change.
Three waters三つの湯
Atami is a hot-spring town, and we wanted you warm in every way it allows. At the house there are two baths of heated water, one under the sky and one under the bay. When you want the real springs, your host meets you in the old town and takes you to a bathhouse we trust.
Two at a time, under the garden tree, with the loungers close by. It's heated tap water, kept warm in every season, so on a cold night you sink in while your breath clouds over the bay. Take turns, wrap up in a towel, and watch the house light up behind you through the glass.
At any hour; after 21:00, quietly, for the neighbours.
Upstairs, a deep oval tub sits in black stone under a wall of glass, and the bay fills the window from edge to edge. A hinoki pail and stool wait by the tub, there is ReFa for your hair and Aesop for the rest, and the light changes every time you look up.
On full-house nights the bath is yours at any hour; on other stays, at hours we agree when you arrive.
Atami's springs have been drawn for more than a thousand years, and the town still runs on them. Every guest gets one free ticket to a day-use onsen your host recommends. Your host walks you to a day-use bathhouse that suits your party, including tattoo-friendly or private baths where they exist, and shows you the etiquette before you go in. Afterwards, roasted tea and something sweet in an old house.
Heated tap water at the house; real hot springs in town, with a free ticket for every guest.
From the house album
These notes are the house's own: a few from your host, and a few that follow an evening here as a guest might live it. Notes from guests themselves will join them here, in their own words and only with their permission. We'll never write one in anyone's name.
The plum by the deck
The plum by the deck came from Kagoshima, a gift from the previous owner's father when the house became ours. Every February it is the first thing on the hill to flower, dark red, and the scent hangs in the air for days. By May there is fruit like this in my hand, and in June whoever is staying helps me pick it.
From your hostAtami Umihoshi
The scroll in Room A
I found the scroll in Room A's alcove at an auction in Kyoto. It is signed 玉峰 and attributed to Hasegawa Gyokuhō, a painter of the Shijō school, born in Kyoto in 1822: an arched bridge among pines and autumn maples, and a few roofs in the hills. It hangs in the room that was once the house's studio, now hinoki and tatami.
From your hostAtami Umihoshi
A fireworks night
Dinner is early, because tonight everyone walks down the hill together. Ten minutes on the train from Ajiro, and the air at Atami already smells of the sea. You find a place by the water as the town goes quiet. The first shell climbs without a sound; the boom comes back off the hills a moment later and lands in your chest. Twenty minutes of red and gold over the bay, then the train back and the slow climb home, the house lit at the top of the hill.
An evening hereAtami Umihoshi
The photographs in Rooms B and C
In Room B the photographs lean against old brick and come out of the dark when the lamps go on. In Room C they stand on the floor by the tall doors, with the bay in the glass behind them. An anemone gone dark at its heart, a branch of leaves in a copper vase, tulips bowing in frosted glass: still lifes, printed in small editions, quiet enough to sleep beside.
About the houseAtami Umihoshi
A night in
Some nights nobody wants to go out again. Someone comes back from the port with sashimi wrapped in paper, someone finds the Imari platters in the cupboard, and the long walnut table fills up under the pendant lamp. Outside, the glass turns from blue to black and the lights of the bay come on one by one. You meant to have an early night. The table had other ideas.
An evening hereAtami Umihoshi
Where to stay, how to bathe, what to do with a day and when the fireworks go up: the town and the coast, written down by your host, with a source beside every fact.
Latest · Itinerary
A Hakone and Atami itinerary for two or three days: the Hakone loop, crossing to Atami by Odawara, a day on the Izu coast, and where to stay for each.
4 min readRead the note
A first-timer's guide to Atami's hot springs: a little history, how to bathe step by step, tattoos, private baths, and day-use onsen you can visit.
4 min readRead the note
An exiled boy, years of prayers and a shogunate: how three shrines around Atami became the pilgrimage of Japan's first shogun, and how to visit them in a day.
2 min readRead the note
Where to stay in Atami with family or friends: what to check in a private villa (real onsen or not, one party a night, the slope, the true price) and ours.
5 min readRead the note
The house as it is, pinned up like prints on a wall: the long table at night, the upper deck in the morning, the reading lamp after dark, the deck after snow, the tableware laid out and coffee by the window. Tap a print to see it large, or follow its line to walk that part of the house.
The walnut table under the big pendant, the old brick wall lit beyond it. Every day here starts and ends at this table: coffee in the morning, laptops after lunch, the harbour's fish at night.
Cloud moving fast over the bay, the hills going blue, the coast running away towards Izu. The deck at the top of the house, where the view the house was built for opens all the way round.
A brass lamp bent over a walnut table, a few books and a cup beside the old brick. The living room keeps one corner for doing nothing at all.
Snow is rare on this coast and never stays long. The morning it comes, the roofs and the trees go white, and the bay lies grey and still beyond them.
Imari-style platters, celadon cups, lacquer and hand-thrown bowls, set out on the walnut table. None of it is for show: this is what you eat from.
A mug and a small pot on the counter, the garden in the glass and the sea just past the tree. Mornings here start slowly, and nobody is waiting for the table.
Umihoshi member's card
Seven stays, five stamps
Free to join; your tier moves up with each completed stay you book direct. Discounts don't combine.
How membership worksNext fireworks over the port: 23 November, 20:20
From ¥19,800 a guest a night by the room, tax included
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From · before tax¥18,000a guest a night+10% tax = ¥19,800 ·
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