Page 238 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Japan

EXPERIENCE Western Honshu The Sahara-like landscape and doors, these distinctive

of the Tottori Sand Dunes
along the San-in coast

u
Tottori Sand Dunes
Amanohashidate
main cultural asset.
Sandbar
Several are open to the
鳥取砂丘 buildings are the village’s o
public, including the former 天橋立
! C4 ⌂ Tottori Prefecture
£ Tottori @ From Stn n At house of the Katayama family, ! D4 ⌂ Kyoto Prefecture
now Fukiya’s Local History
Tottori Stn; (0857) 22-3318 £ Amanohashidate n At
Museum, and an old plaster-
A huge expanse of brown and and-tile schoolhouse. Amanohashidate Stn;
(0772) 22-8030
yellow undulations, the Tottori Just outside the village is a
sand dunes stretch for 10 miles copper and ocher mine, which One of the highlights of
(16 km) along the San-in coast. can be visited. The Hirokane- Miyatsu Bay, along the San-in
To the Japanese, the towering tei, an unusual Edo-period coast, is Amanohashi date, the
dunes, some rising to 300 ft home resembling a fortified “bridge of heaven.” The 2-mile
(90 m), and the shifting pat- chateau, is about 2 miles (4-km) pine-studded sandbar
terns and shadows formed (4 km) outside the town. separates the bay from
across the sand, are lyrical Asokai lagoon. According to
reminders of the human Local History Museum Japan ese mythology, this is
condition. Abe Kobo’s powerful " ⌂ 699 Nariwachō the spot where the gods
existential novel The Woman # 9am–5pm Wed–Mon conceived the Japanese
in the Dunes (1962) is set islands. Visitors usually
here. Commercialization has Hirokane-tei take the boat across the
inevitably hit the area – head " ⌂ 2710 Nakano lagoon from the pier near
east across the dunes or rent a # 9am–5pm daily the station, then a cable car
bike for a quieter experience.
Cherry trees framing
i Hikone Castle, whose
Fukiya keep (inset) offers
吹屋 views of Lake Biwa
! C5 ⌂ Okayama
Prefecture, Takahashi city
@ From Bitchu Takahashi
A prosperous boom town at
the center of the 19th-century
copper and red-ocher mining
industry, Fukiya is now a rustic
hamlet tucked into beautiful
mountain countryside. Well-
to-do merchants and mine
owners built grand houses
here. Characterized by white
plaster walls and red-ocher-
colored latticework windows
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