You'll find Koiji Beach by following the bay road past the fishing co-op, where the scent of drying nets and diesel gives way to salt air and warm sand. The beach itself runs perhaps two hundred meters, hemmed by weathered tetrapods on one end and a rocky outcrop on the other. It's intimate rather than expansive, the kind of place that holds a dozen people comfortably and feels crowded at twenty.
“Nanao Bay's most dramatic sunset vantage point, where the western exposure aligns perfectly with the water.”
Credit: UnsplashCrashing wave at sunset on the shoreline
The sand here carries a faint golden tint, packed firm near the waterline where small waves from passing boats create temporary ripples. You'll wade into bathwater-warm shallows that stay knee-deep for thirty meters out, the bay bottom smooth and silty beneath your feet. Across the water, the Noto hills rise in layers of blue-green, their ridgelines softening in the afternoon haze.
But you've really come for the hour before dark. As the sun drops toward those western hills, the entire bay transforms—the water turns from slate to copper, the fishing boats anchored offshore become dark silhouettes against molten sky, and the light takes on that particular quality that makes every surface seem to glow from within. Couples spread blankets on the upper beach and watch the show, the quiet broken only by the occasional putter of a returning fishing boat.
