Short Cuts

IZU’S WILD SIDE Had it with history? Go play outside. The Izu west coast offers a variety of outdoor fun. From Shimoda station, take the hour-long bus ride to Dogashima then wind your way down the peninsula toward Irozaki, Izu’s southernmost point.

Once at Dogashima, hop on the $7 sightseeing boat for a 20-minute tour of the region’s famed craggy, tree-topped rock islets that invoke Japanese classical landscape paintings. Before getting back on the bus, the musically inclined should check out the Kayama Yuzo museum, a shrine to a famous old-time crooner who does a not-half-bad rendition of Blue Suede Shoes, which on occasion blasts from the loudspeakers just outside the building.

Irozaki, the final stop on the line, features the “Jungle Park,” an excellent showcase of tropical birds and plants with a soundtrack straight out of King Kong. To reach the southernmost tip of the Izu, walk through a torii, or Shinto gate, near the rear exit of the Jungle Park and step down past a little shrine. There you’ll look out over jutting rocks as fishing and cargo boats ply the black waters to the south. I was thoroughly enjoying the isolated, out-of-this-world feeling, when I met Naoki Taira, a 25-year-old Tokyoite who was visiting Izu with his girlfriend. “Is America going to attack Iraq?” he asked. And then I was back in the real world.