Driving around the Izu Peninsula: a 3-day camping roadtrip

At the end of May, my husband and I took a 3-day road trip down to Izu. It’s a peninsula directly south of Mt Fuji in Shizuoka prefecture, and the main road runs right alongside the coastline, so you can enjoy some great seaside views, not to mention all the little caves and beaches you can check out along the way. To drive around the whole coastline of Izu - from Odawara to Numazu - is a little over 200km, and can technically be done in 6 hours. However realistically speaking, when you factor in all the little stops you make along the way, I would probably recommend giving yourself at least 5 days for a full circuit. In our case since we only had 3 days, we chose to drive down the eastern coastline, getting as far south as the town of Shimoda. Then we cut inland across the peninsula and headed west towards the town of Matsuzaki, before driving up along the western coastline and back to our home in Tokyo. We’ve previously done a camping road trip to Hokkaido, and had been talking…