Shizuoka

静岡 · Sumpu Castle, Suruga Bay's sakura-shrimp, and Tokugawa Ieyasu's retirement seat

Shizuoka City — old Sumpu — was Tokugawa Ieyasu's chosen base in childhood, in the years between his shogunal abdication and his death in 1616. The stone foundation of Sumpu Castle's main keep, excavated again from 2016, is the largest castle-keep foundation ever built in Japan; the surrounding park keeps the moats and rebuilt Tatsumi-yagura turret. Inside the inner bailey, Momijiyama Garden recreates four landscapes of old Suruga Province — village, sea, mountain hamlet, mountain path — around a central pond. Out toward Shimizu Port, S-Pulse Dream Plaza and the Dream Plaza Ferris Wheel face Suruga Bay; on clear winter days the view reaches Mt. Fuji. Yui Port, on the Shimizu-Ward coast, is the only place in Japan licensed to fish sakura-ebi — the translucent pink shrimp of Suruga Bay, harvested twice yearly in spring and autumn and served raw, deep-fried as kakiage, or sun-dried on bayside racks. Above the harbor, the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art sits on the Nihondaira foothills, a sculpture-lined promenade leading to a permanent collection that pairs Eastern and Western landscape painting.

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