Izu Peninsula, Suruga Bay

I joined up with the U.S. Yokota Air Base "Finnatics" dive club for these dives. From Tokyo, it was more than a two-hour drive to this beautiful and rugged coastline. Little is cheap in Japan, and you have to pay a fee to compensate the Japanese fishermen for their loss of fishing grounds to scuba divers (you can't just go shore diving anywhere you want). There is little parking at the shoreline, so you park at the top of the hill, and a DM takes you and your gear to the bottom of the hill. There, a blue tarp awaits you and your group. You can't bring your own tanks…but they deliver tanks to your tarp for around $30 for the first tank and $20 for the second (as I recall). There are nice restrooms, hot outdoor showers, dip tanks for the cameras, hot bento plate lunches (well, that's what we call them in Hawaii). There's a concrete ramp with a handrail that descends from the shoreline into the water. The dive itself is somewhat austere (little reef here), but an abundance of dragon moray eels and lionfish more than make up for it! All of the fish (and eels) are different from Hawaii's, and I enjoyed the two dives greatly! Except for the dive club members, there was only one other non-Japanese speaking person at the site! Everyone was friendly and courteous, but there were lines of divers exiting and entering the water.