A small volcanic island in the Izu chain, reachable from Tokyo by jetfoil in about two hours, with a long white-sand beach break and a real, centuries-deep tea culture of its own — just not a Chinese one.
The wave
Niijima is a small volcanic island in Tokyo’s Izu chain, reachable by high-speed jetfoil from Takeshiba pier in roughly two hours — one of the more accessible island surf trips from a major city anywhere in the world. Habushiura, a long, white-sand beach on the island’s eastern side, catches long-period swell and offers enough length of coastline that a crowd on one section rarely means a crowd everywhere. The island is also known for its onsen — natural hot springs, some literally built into the sand near the shoreline — a genuinely good pairing with a morning in cooler water.
The tea note
Japan has one of the world’s great tea cultures, but it’s built on its own leaf and its own ceremony — sencha, matcha, houjicha — distinct from the Chinese categories this kit is organised around, and worth encountering on its own terms rather than folded into ours. What we’d pack for Niijima is the same during-surf logic as anywhere else: a cold-brewed Chinese oolong or green tea in a bottle, carried down to Habushiura for the lulls, alongside — not instead of — whatever tea the island itself does far better than we could bring in.