Izu Islands Cruising
伊豆諸島クルージングthe volcanic chain running south from Sagami Bay — all of it administered by Tokyo
About the Izu Islands1 upcoming voyage cruises the Izu Islands
Times shown are as scheduled and can change. Weather, sea conditions and port operations may shorten a call or prevent it — always check the latest information from NYK Cruises, and once aboard, from the ship.
About the Izu Islands
Not a port. A day the ship spends among the Izu Islands rather than at any of them, and on these voyages it comes after the call at Shimizu: out of Suruga Bay, round the end of the peninsula, and south down the chain. The islands are the tops of volcanoes on the ridge that runs from Mount Fuji out into the Pacific, Tokyo administers every one of them, and the northern ones lie inside Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. There is nothing to book and nowhere to be — the point of the day is the deck.
What you see from the deck
Izu Oshima and Mount Mihara
The nearest island and the largest, and an active volcano. It erupted in November 1986 and the whole population, about ten thousand people, was taken off by ship within a week; the lava that came down the flank is still bare rock. The island is a Japanese Geopark, and the shape of the caldera reads from the sea.
Tokyo Islands (Tokyo Metropolitan Islands Promotion Corporation, official) ↗in Japanese — your browser can translate it
Niijima and Kozushima
Niijima is built of a pale rhyolite light enough to float, quarried on the island and, the village says, in only one other place in the world. Kozushima past it is a single lava dome, flat-topped and bare above the treeline.
Niijima Village (official) ↗in Japanese — your browser can translate it
Mikurajima
Steep, forested and almost without a harbour — landings are called off more often than they are made. It carries an evergreen broadleaf forest that Tokyo protects and a resident pod of bottlenose dolphins whose visitors the island rations. From the water it is a wall.
Tokyo Islands (Tokyo Metropolitan Islands Promotion Corporation, official) ↗in Japanese — your browser can translate it
Official sources
- Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park (Ministry of the Environment) ↗
- Tokyo Islands (Tokyo Metropolitan Islands Promotion Corporation, official) ↗in Japanese — your browser can translate it