Tottori Sand Dunes
Interesting facts
- The open sand is partly a human creation: forests around the dunes were cut to fuel traditional tatara iron smelting, letting the sand spread farther.
- By 1991 about 42 percent of the dunes had turned to grassland, and regular weeding by the prefecture and city began in 1994.
- Tottori University's desert-greening research on the dunes has been put to use in reforestation work in China's deserts.
- The Sand Museum beside the dunes is described as the world's first museum devoted entirely to sand sculpture.
- The dunes were designated a national natural monument in 1955 and were listed among Japan's 100 notable geological sites in 2007.
- After typhoons, winds stronger than about 12 metres per second can carve damp sand into small upright columns known as sachū, or sand pillars.
- In 2011 four skeletons buried in a row with heads to the west were found in the sand, dated to the late Edo or early Meiji period.
- The slopes host the All-Japan Sandboard Championship, and the dunes are also used for paragliding and hang gliding.
- The 'sand dune town' in Akiko Hayashi's million-selling picture book 'Kon and Aki' is set on the Tottori dunes.
- Sixteen plant species are designated as characteristic dune plants here, among them beach vitex and beach morning glory.
Why it is worth it
Japan is a land of forests and rice terraces, which makes the Tottori Sand Dunes a surprise: a strip of coastal dunes stretching some 16 km along the Sea of Japan, up to about 2.4 km deep, formed from sediment carried down from the Chūgoku Mountains by the Sendai River and shaped by the wind over about 100,000 years. The part most people mean by the name is the Hamasaka dune, east of the river mouth, which is a national natural monument and lies within the San'in Kaigan Geopark, a UNESCO Global Geopark.
The landscape rewards close looking. The second ridge of dunes, known as Uma-no-se, "the horse's back", rises in a wall of sand some 46 metres high, and from its crest you look straight out to the sea. Wind of moderate strength draws fine ripples called fūmon across the surface; after rain, as damp sand dries, it slides away in rows of little curtains known as saren. In the hollows behind the ridge, groundwater seeps up to form the "oasis", a pool that can be over a metre deep in winter and vanishes in summer. On summer nights the lights of squid-fishing boats line the horizon.
The dunes are also a place of human history. For generations they were a nuisance to farmers, and after the Second World War large areas were planted with trees; the planting later began to shrink the open sand and let grass invade, and volunteers now weed the dunes to keep them bare. Poets including Yosano Akiko wrote verses about them, now set in stones nearby, and Tottori University uses the dunes for research into desert greening. Beside the dunes, the Sand Museum shows large sand sculptures around a new theme each year.
Getting there
The dunes lie about 4.5 km from central Tottori. Buses from the terminal at the north exit of JR Tottori Station take about 20 minutes to the Sakyu-Kaikan (Tottori Sakyu) stop, a few minutes' walk from the sand. Tottori Sand Dunes Conan Airport (TTJ) is about 6 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Tottori Sand Dunes are sand dunes located outside the city center of Tottori in Tottori Prefecture, Japan. With a length of 9 miles (14 km) and a width of less than 1.5 miles (2.4 km), it is the largest sand dune in Japan. The sand dunes are part of the San'in Kaigan Geopark, which is part of the UNESCO Global Geoparks.
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