The feast of fish being delivered to our table is fit for the Emperor, as is the price of the room I'm eating it in at Inubosaki Kanko hotel in Choshi, a small seaside town in northeastern Chiba Prefecture. But I'm not complaining about forking out ¥36,000 for one night as it's the biggest and best room here — a field of tatami that a whole stable of sumo wrestlers could fit snugly upon, and not so much an ocean view as being virtually on the beach.

Looking out of our third-floor windows — the top floor — my companion, Mina, is taking in the view. "Wow!" she exclaims. "Look at this!" I stroll over and she points to the onsen (hot-spring bath) below where a bunch of naked men are soaking and gazing at the ocean. "Get the video camera," I say, "we can make one of those pervy Peeping-Tom sex films and sell it to my local DVD shop. It will help cover the cost of this room."

Soon, I'm sweating in the hot bath myself while the sea breeze simultaneously cools me. I look up to see if there are any cameras pointing down, and I toss a thumbs up to the sky and laugh. The beach starts next to the low wooden wall that surrounds the bath, the waves within spitting distance. At night, stars dot the sky, unlike in Tokyo. The area in front of the onsen has no bathers because of a mass of rocks littering the water, but a short three-minute stroll along the sand and you're at an area good for swimming and surfing with a clean sea and the beach house Nagasakiya serving ice-cold beers for when it gets too hot.