Shirahama

Kansai, Japan · Sea / Beach, Town / small city

The hot spring has been written about for some fourteen hundred years: the Nihon Shoki records that in 657 Prince Arima recommended it to Empress Saimei, who came the following year, and at the Sakinoyu bath you still get into tubs cut from the rock at sea level, with the waves splashing in. Around it there is a beach of very white sand, part of it brought from Australia, an island with a hole the setting sun drops neatly into, a sixty-metre cliff with a lift that drops thirty-six metres underground to the cave where the Kumano fleet hid, and an animal park that kept pandas for thirty-one years and has had none since 2025.

The essentials

Getting there

Train — Shirahama is one of the best-connected remote places in Japan, for an unusual reason: it has its own airport with direct flights from Tokyo, and from there it is ten minutes by taxi or twenty by bus into town. By train, JR’s Kisei line reaches Shirahama station on the limited expresses that run down the coast from Shin-Osaka. One thing to understand: the station is not in the spa town. The baths, the beach and the cliffs are off to the west, ten to twenty minutes by bus or car depending where you are going, so the local bus is part of the plan rather than a workaround. Sandanbeki is twenty minutes from the station and the aquarium another twenty in the same direction. Tanabe, the gateway to the Kumano Kodo, is thirteen kilometres and twenty-five minutes away: the two chain together effortlessly, and that is the natural way to do them.

Frequently asked questions about Shirahama

What to do in Shirahama: 13 activities

• Sakinoyu, the bath in the rock 1 h must-see

  Tubs cut into the rock at sea level, open to the Pacific with only a few metres between you and the swell: when it breaks hard, salt water comes in. It is the town’s own public bath and it is the physical continuity of the chronicles: these are the stones the seventh-century imperial visits were about. Five hundred yen from age three, free with a disability certificate and a companion. The hours move with the season: 8:00 to 17:00 from October to March, 8:00 to 18:00 in spring and September, and 7:00 to 19:00 in July and August, last entry half an hour before closing. No fixed closing day. Locker a hundred yen, towel hire two hundred, and no soap or shampoo: the bathwater runs out to sea.

• Fourteen hundred years of hot spring 0.5 h must-see

  What sets Shirahama apart from any other spa town is that it is documented. The Nihon Shoki records that in 657 Prince Arima recommended these waters to Empress Saimei, who came the following year with the crown prince, and that the spring appears again in the record for 685 and in later imperial visits. It was called the hot water of Muro then. That antiquity is what gives it its place among Japan’s three ancient hot springs, with Dogo and Arima. The water is sodium chloride and comes out at seventy-eight degrees.

• The beach with sand brought from Australia 2 h must-see

  Six hundred metres of very white sand with the spa town right behind it, which is where the municipality gets its name: shirahama means white beach. There is a detail people tend not to know and which explains why it stays so white: some of the sand has been brought in from Australia to hold back erosion. The water is calm and the beach is in the middle of town, so you walk down to it from the ryokan in flip-flops.

• The cliff and the lift down to the cave 1.5 h must-see

  Two kilometres of near-vertical wall fifty to sixty metres high dropping into the sea, and inside it a lift that goes down thirty-six metres in twenty-four seconds to a sea cave. Below there are two hundred metres of passage with the swell booming through it, a guard hut rebuilt from documents, and a bronze Benzaiten among the largest in the country. The story behind it is that, by legend, the Kumano fleet hid its ships here in the Heian period, during the Genpei war. Fifteen hundred yen from junior high and seven hundred and fifty for primary, preschoolers free; open 8:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:50, all year except a few days of maintenance in mid-December.

• The island with the hole 1 h must-see

  An islet off the coast with a natural arch opened through its middle, and the game is being in the right place on the right day: on certain dates of the year the sun sets fitted exactly inside the hole. The rest of the time it is still the silhouette in every photograph of Shirahama, with the sky going orange to purple behind it. You watch from land; no boat needed.

• Adventure World, the park with no pandas 4 h

  The first thing to say is what is no longer there. For thirty-one years this park bred giant pandas and it was why most people came; in June 2025 the last four — Ryohin and her offspring Yuihin, Ayahin and Kaede — went back to China, and since January 2026, with the return of the two at Ueno, there is not one left in Japan. The panda enclosure is still standing, and empty. What remains is a genuinely large park, with a drive-through safari, marine shows and rides: ¥5,300 for adults, ¥4,800 from sixty-five, ¥4,300 the middle rate and ¥3,300 for children, 10:00 to 17:00 depending on season and no fixed closing day. Note: the town tourism association’s website still advertises the pandas.

• Chaining up with the Kumano Kodo 0.5 h

  Shirahama and Tanabe are thirteen kilometres and twenty-five minutes apart, and they are two different things that fit together: the spa and the coast here, the gateway to the Kumano Kodo and the mountains there. The sensible thing is not to choose. Plenty of walkers do their Kodo sections out of Tanabe and come down to Shirahama to rest their legs in Sakinoyu, which is exactly what this water has been for over fourteen hundred years.

• The Kyoto University aquarium 1.5 h

  Not a show aquarium but the one attached to a university marine laboratory, and it shows in what is on display: only animals from the sea off the Kii peninsula, around five hundred species, and nearly half of them invertebrates. There are more than fifteen species of sea urchin together, which is a sentence no other aquarium can say. Six hundred yen from high school age and two hundred for primary and junior high, open 9:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:30, and it never closes.

• The round of the public baths 2 h

  Besides the hotel spas, Shirahama keeps a set of public bathhouses scattered round the town, of which Sakinoyu is the famous one but not the only one. It is the cheap, local way to understand the place: you walk from one to the next with a towel over your shoulder, the way residents do, and each has its own character. Worth asking at your lodging which are currently open, because the line-up changes over the years.

• The Senjojiki 0.75 h

  A platform of white rock the waves have eaten into stepped slabs, which is where the name comes from: a thousand tatami mats. No railing, no ticket and no hours: you walk out over it as far as seems wise, with the Pacific below. It is a step from Sandanbeki and the car park is free. At sunset the stone turns orange and that is when it earns the trip.

• Fire at the southern tip of Honshu: ten hectares of burning grass 5 h Cabo Shionomisaki, Kushimoto · 85 min only one Saturday in January; no fixed rule is published

  Worth knowing from the start that this is not a rite. At Cape Shionomisaki, the southernmost point of Honshu, some ten hectares of grassland called the Boro no Shiba are burned in one go, and the aim of the burn is to kill pests and force the grass to shoot again. It used to be done in daylight; moving it to nightfall turned it into this: at dusk, around half past five, archers loose burning arrows over the dry grass, fireworks go up, and the whole meadow catches at once. The town hall's programme runs from one in the afternoon to half past six, with stalls and a serving of shorasan-nabe that runs out. Some three thousand five hundred people come. Mind the date, because it is in January and not February: in 2026 it fell on Saturday the 17th, with the following Saturday held in reserve in case of weather, and no rule is published, so the 2027 date has to be checked. You reach Kushimoto station on the Kisei line and the cape from there on the Shionomisaki-Izumo community bus, two hundred yen a ride, which runs every day; check the return times before you go, because this ends after dark. None of the sources consulted says whether there is an admission charge.

• The airport that changes everything 0.5 h

  It is the reason Shirahama does not behave like the remote place it is: it has its own airport with direct flights from Tokyo, and from the airport into town is ten minutes by taxi or twenty by bus. That puts the tip of the Kii peninsula a little over an hour from Haneda, when overland it is five. For anyone coming from Tokyo with few days, it completely changes the sum of whether this corner fits into the trip.

• The fish market 1.5 h

  A big fish market on the edge of town, the hangar kind with hundreds of stalls, where you buy it raw or eat it on the spot. It is the popular counterweight to the expensive ryokan: for what a hotel dinner costs you eat freshly cut tuna standing at a high table. It is on the way to the station, which makes it a natural stop arriving or leaving.

What only happens on specific dates

• Fire at the southern tip of Honshu: ten hectares of burning grass one Saturday in January; no fixed rule is published

Chains well with

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