Ryugu Sea Cave — Local services in Shimoda

The Ryugu Sea Cave is located about 4 hours southwest of Tokyo or about half that time if you take the toll expressways. You can also access the cave in about 3 hours from Tokyo if you take the bullet train, local lines, and a bus.

I left home at around 1:00 a.m. and reached the sea cave at around 5:00 a.m. Having drove all night without a break, I was exhausted. But the second I entered the cave, all the exhaustion disappeared and I grew excited imagining what kinds of compositions I could achieve.

To be honest, I found it difficult to find a good composition at this site. If I had brought a graduated ND filter, I could have caught the beautiful blue colors of the ocean and sky that were visible from the entrance of the cave. I also struggled with how long of an exposure of the waves I wanted and was not exactly sure what f-stops would work best.

Of the shots taken, I would probably say that the first and third ones below are...

Ryugukutsu itself is nice, but going there without a car is hard (so minus 1 ⭐️) From Shimoda station, the only bus going here departs very few times a day now. We had to take a taxi to save time (costed about ¥2400 for approx. 20min ride one-way). Going around the cave & heart viewpoint took us about 30mins max (including lots of picture taking). + Going to nearby Toji beach & the sand ski area (not in “operation” but you can go down to check it)= add maybe 10mins. There’s no taxi stand in Ryugukutsu so we had to walk back maybe 20-30 mins to where Kisami bus stop is (going through tunnels along the way, which the staff? said was ok to do..) Passing through different beaches was nice, but it was kinda dangerous. So might be better to either rent a car or maybe ask your taxi to...

To be honest, I am a little bit disappointed when I arrived there after one-hour driving. At the beginning, I can’t even find the entrance, after that, I saw many bugs on the floor when I tried to go down through the stairs. But I still recommend you to go and have a look if you gonna pass this spot, just stop and have a look. It’s really good but not that special.

Ps: the Chinese translation is wrong, totally different meaning from the English version and...