While I was down in Shimane for the new year’s holidays, we took a day out to visit the Tottori Sand Dunes (or “tottori sakyuu”) - the largest sand dunes in Japan. When Japanese people think of Tottori, the sand dunes is one of the first things that come to mind. And so my husband and his family were nice enough to indulge me wanting to play the tourist and we made the drive over from Shimane.
My husband had fairly low expectations from his memories of visiting it as a school kid (it’s just a big pile of sand, after all) and told me not to get my hopes up too much.
And for sure, when you first arrive at the dunes, there’s a lot of people wandering about, so it’s not quite the same as the natural, untouched-by-man scenery I usually get to enjoy on a hike.
But if you climb the large slope known as the Umanose (or “horse’s back”) you can get a pretty neat view of the Sea of Japan.
What’s also really cool is if you can time your visit, you might be able to see sand, sea and snow in the same shot, as snow can pile up on top of the dunes. Unfortunately there hadn’t been any snowfall yet when we visited, but it made for a beautiful view all the same.
As well as enjoying the sand dunes itself, it’s quite fun to do a bit of people-watching - you can see the more energetic people attempting to run up the steep slopes of the dune rather than take the more gradual paths up.
From the top of the Umanose, you can also descend down to the beach - but the slope down was very, very steep so we skipped that, as we didn’t want to figure out how to climb back up.
Speaking of people-watching, we also came across a man in a cat suit of all things.
It reminded me of an interview from a Japanese variety TV show I had seen once, about a man in a cat suit who ran a hot sweet potato stand. His name was Yamada Mike (山田三毛) - the Mike is pronounced “mi-ke” and means “calico” in Japanese. I couldn’t find it anymore on YouTube so maybe it got taken down, but there’s a clip on TikTok still up as of writing this.
… and as I went to re-watch the video, I realised that it was also filmed in Tottori of all places. The cat suit doesn’t quite look the same as the video, so either there’s a community of cat-suit wearing furries in Tottori, or maybe the guy makes spare suits and sells it to people?
From a bit more digging, I found a video of Yamada Mike and the cat I saw, so maybe they’re friends. Anyway, the cat-man seemed happy to wander the dunes and get his pictures taken with people, so I suppose this is how he enjoys his days off. Yamada Mike also has a blog where he writes about making the suits (I love the internet).
All-in-all, if you walk slowly, you could probably spend 30 - 60 minutes if you just did a quick loop on the Umanose, so it’s a fairly short visit. The sand dunes stretch out for quite a while though, so you could extend your visit by walking down to the water, or just out along the dunes away from the crowds.
If you are looking for more things to do in the area, there are camel rides on the dunes (although we didn’t see any out today), plus a sand sculpture museum. The dunes are actually quite close to the city centre, and as you would expect from its popularity, there did seem to be regular buses running too, so you should be able to get to it fairly easily if you’re coming via public transport.
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