Just over a month later, my wife, Elizabeth, and our three boys, Alexander, James and William, were back for a second visit.June 16, 2002Getaways From Tokyo Scented by Sea and FlowersBy JAMES BROOKE FULL moon rose from behind a bamboo thicket and climbed across the sky; it gradually illuminated harvested rice paddies and in the far distance, a thin strip of Pacific surf. Watching from a cedar deck, I realized that in Tateyama, I had found a tonic for Tokyo. One side of Tokyo Bay, the west side, is renowned as one of the world's largest agglomerations of people, about 10 million at last count. The east side, virtually unknown outside Japan, appears on maps as a splotch of green that spreads down the Boso Peninsula to Tateyama. Less than a two-hour train ride from Tokyo, the resort city of Tateyama is a place to ride a bicycle through fields of flower farms, stroll on lonely Pacific beaches, contemplate centuries-old Shinto shrines and visit Japan's largest reclining Buddha. Tateyama, with 52,000 people, offers a chance to trade the rush of traffic for the rush of the sea, the metallic air of subway lines for earthy aromas of freshly turned fields and composting leaves. Tokyo is a color-deprived city; in Tateyama, fields of red carnations and yellow rape seed roll up to the walls of bed-and-breakfasts.