Cape Manazuru in Kanagawa prefecture is a scenic spot that juts out from the coastline and is home to the Mitsuishi (“three rocks”). The two largest are joined together with Shinto ropes and there is a tiny little torii gate jutting out of the top of the rock as well. If you manage to catch the sunrise at the beginning of the year from here, you can even see the sun rise in between the two rocks (that must be magical). This was our first stop on our recent Izu road trip.
The nearby town of Manazuru is quite a tiny one - it’s the second smallest by population in Kanagawa prefecture, only losing to Kiyokawa near the Tanzawa mountains. It’s most famous for its stone, “Hon-Komatsu-Ishi”, which was quarried and used to build the Edo Castle. Quite cutely, it seems the town’s official motto/logo is “Find Happiness in Manazuru” (幸せをつくる真鶴時間), which is a catchphrase they created in an attempt to boost the town’s tourism.
It seems you can only walk on the rocks at Cape Manazuru at low tide, so luckily we were in time to at least walk partway across. (You can see a photo on Wikipedia of it at high tide).
The area was full of crabs (cool) and wharf roaches (ew) that would scuttle away under the rocks when they saw you coming. I might recommend wearing closed-toe shoes.
From the cape, you can see out to the distant peak of the cone-shaped Mt Omuro.
Off to a good start, we also spotted our first new bird on our roadtrip - a Short-tailed shearwater.
They seem to be commonly spotted up in Hokkaido but I found a random archive of an article from 1984 which seems to suggest that you can spot them at the end of May in Shizuoka as well. Like me, these guys are originally from Australia! And are a migratory bird that breed all the way down in Tasmania. And have flown a long way to end up here in Manazuru (and I think continue on up further north as well).
Cape Manazuru really is quite pretty, and has been designated as one of the 50 scenic spots of Kanagawa (かながわの景勝50選). Maybe because we went on a Friday, but it was super quiet, and there were only a couple of other people around.
Back up on higher ground, there also was a small stone marking the spot where an artillery battery (gun) once stood in 1851. Foreign ships eventually did come to Izu in 1853 (to the town of Shimoda - which I will get to in a future post).
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