Retro Atami: a day in the Showa seaside town

Atami has been a hot-spring town for well over a thousand years, but the Atami that's fashionable again is the one from the Showa era: the honeymoon town of the 1950s and 60s, with its grand hotels, neon arcades and coffee houses where the cups haven't changed since. Young people from Tokyo now come for exactly what their parents left behind. Here is a day through that town, at an easy pace, with the stories that make it worth the walk.

The honeymoon years

In the years after the war, Atami was where newlyweds came. From 1951 a Saturday-only express, the Hatsushima, ran packed with honeymooners bound for Atami and Itō, and inns with lucky names were their favourites. By 1961 more visitors came to Atami's hot springs than to any other in Japan. The hotels were grand, the arcades were full, and the back streets filled with snack bars and kissaten. Then tastes changed. Honeymooners flew to Miyazaki, then abroad, and for a long time the town looked tired.

Why retro, why now

What brought Atami back was, in part, the town learning to love what it already had. Local people opened cafés and small shops in old buildings instead of knocking them down, and the arcades, the signs and the kissaten that had looked dated began to look like the real thing, which is what they were. Today the old postcards look new again. Walk slowly: the best of retro Atami is in the details, a tiled shopfront, a hand-lettered menu, a jukebox no one has unplugged.

Morning: the arcades

Start at Atami Station. Two covered arcades, Heiwa-dori and Nakamise, run downhill from the station square, lined with onsen manju, dried fish and souvenir shops whose signs have hardly changed in decades. Buy a bag of himono to take home later, or a steamed bun for now, and look up: above the new shopfronts, the old ones are often still there.

Late morning: Kiunkaku

Walk down towards the sea to Kiunkaku. It was built in 1919 as a villa and praised as one of Atami's three great villas. In 1947 it became a ryokan, loved by writers including Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Shiga Naoya and Dazai Osamu. The city has owned it since 2000 and opens its Japanese rooms, Western-style salons and garden to visitors. Look for the stained glass and the tiled floors in the Western rooms, and sit for a while on the veranda above the garden. It's closed on Wednesdays.

Lunch and a kissaten

Atami still has Showa-era kissaten where the chairs, the cups and sometimes the owner haven't changed in years. Have lunch, then siphon coffee and a custard pudding with a burnt top, and take your time; nobody here will hurry you. Afterwards, wander Atami Ginza, once the busy heart of town, where old neon hangs beside new cafés and small galleries. It's the street where you can see the town's two lives side by side.

Afternoon: the great camphor

Take the JR Ito Line one stop to Kinomiya and walk to Kinomiya Shrine. Its great camphor is more than 2,000 years old and about 24 metres round the trunk, a national natural monument. Walk round it once; the town believes it adds a year to your life. Every July, from the 14th to the 16th, the shrine's Kogashi Matsuri brings more than thirty floats and as many mikoshi out into the town, and the whole of retro Atami comes out to watch.

Dusk: the seafront

Come back down to the sea for the evening. On the promenade by Sun Beach stands the statue of Kan'ichi and Omiya, the lovers who part on Atami's shore in Ozaki Kōyō's novel The Golden Demon, the story that made this beach famous a century ago. As the light goes, the lights come on around the bay, and the hotels that once filled with honeymooners light up one window at a time. If you have time, finish at one of Atami's day-use hot springs before dinner.

Tips for the day

• Wear good shoes. Atami is built on a slope, and the best streets are the steep ones.
• Go on a weekday if you can; the arcades are busiest at weekends.
• Check Kiunkaku's opening day before you plan around it.
• Carry some cash. Many of the old kissaten and shops take cash only.

Walk it with us

We run this as the Retro Atami walk: about three and a half hours on foot from Atami Station, with your host as guide in English or Japanese. Add a kimono from a rental studio in town if you'd like to walk the Showa streets in one, or make an afternoon of it with a kissaten crawl. Book it with your stay and the stay is 10% less.