Atami Castle — Attraction in Atami

Atami Castle looks very impressive from the beach, but I ultimately found it to be the worst castle I have been to in Japan.

Atami Castle cost about 1000, which is a little expensive for a castle. When I entered, it felt more like a tourist trap than a castle. Many reviews mention the arcade in the basement, but that arcade is very loud. The 1st floor had a good museum, but the noise from the arcade made it difficult to enjoy. The second floor had an exhibit about castles all over Japan. The third floor was about Ukiyoe. The fourth was some kind of guessing game about Edo art. The observation deck was beautiful, but it had gacha and crane games. That also felt kind of tacky and reinforced my impressions.

The highlight of Atami Castle was the foot bath. On the second floor you can enjoy a small footpath with a very good view of the ocean. It was very unique and enjoyed it a lot.

The loop bus will take you straight to the castle, but it is a winding road. If you're already at the beach, take the ropeway up. The loop bus is somewhat infrequent and Google Maps suggests a strange path back to the station. I suggest taking the ropeway...

Just an old Japanese castle that is fully renovated for tourists to visit. It has a lift, which is surprising and convenient for users. The ticket price is okay since it allows everyone to enjoy a lot of its venues on each floor.

Their top floor has a 360 degree view of Atami, which was nice. However, that place was quite dark, making photo-taking of people a bit more annoying since they would appear very dark in the photo no matter how hard we tried to adjust the lighings.

The floor also has a few gacha machines, including the super important memorial coin machine that had some small, high quality coins for keeping.

Each floor below has a museum or some cool exhibitions that are short enough to make me not lose enough interest.

The ground floor has a gift shop but its goods had nothing special at all. But that's completely fine.

The bottom-most floor has an arcade with over a dozen games that we can play for FREE, which was super pleasant and a surprise for everyone. Though, they were a bit old and wornout, but I saw many people...

The castle itself isn’t really worth seeing (as it’s not a historical site, just built as a tourist sightseeing point), but decent for a nice view of the atami area.

The inside of the building is filled with miscellaneous, low budget entertainment like edo period costume photo set ups, riddles (which, if you can’t read Japanese you would skip the floor entirely) and one floor for pornographic art (for anyone over 18). There however is a free to play arcade in the basement which you could potentially get your money’s worth out of as there are lots of machines from taiko no tatsujin to mariocart.

Overall 1,100yen per person for entry is fairly steep so if you only have a limited amount of time I would give this...