Nishiizu Auto Camping Ground

Nishiizu Auto Camping Ground (西伊豆オートキャンプ場) is where we spent our second night on our 3-day Izu roadtrip. After heading down along the eastern coast to the town of Shimoda, we then cut across west through the Izu Peninsula out to the town of Matsuzaki. Google puts this Nishiizu campsite as a 15-minute drive inland from Matsuzaki, but realistically unless you are comfortable speeding down narrow and windy roads, it is probably more like 20 - 25 minutes. There is a MaxValu supermarket in Matsuzaki, so I’d recommend stocking up before making the drive in. The highlight of this campground is that they had a tiny onsen on-site for an extra 500 yen per person (although only provides soap, so bring your own shampoo) which felt quite luxurious - usually you have to drive somewhere else. The onsen was split by gender, but was quite small - it can only comfortably fit 2 - 3 people at a time. The campground had come up with this rather novel system with the shoeboxes at the entrance to the onsen.…