It’s winter in Japan, the weather is cold, the sky is often grey, and sometimes, just to pitilessly finish us off, we’re blown around by the wind and drenched by the rain. It’s not the perfect season for a trip into the Japanese hinterlands!
But it’s also an opportunity to discover unique landscapes and I’ll try to prove it to you this year. This time, I’m taking you to the west coast, for a walk along Tottori’s dunes.
These dunes are composed of sediments from the nearest mountains, brought here by rivers and structured by the wind. So this sand contains more soil particles and is a lot darker than the Dune of Pyla in Arcachon Bay, France / back home in France.
The stretch of sand, constantly eroding, is also less extensive and the dunes far smaller (50 metres high against 110 metres for our national dune in Arcachon). You get me, I wouldn’t suggest the Tottori Dunes unless you live nearby or… maybe… if it’s snowing hard 🙂
I’m from Arcachon, and I’m (of course) used to the famous Dune of Pyla. Consequently, I didn’t expect to be astonished by Tottori’s. However, for the first time, I knew that I was finally going to walk on snow powdered dunes with the ocean in front of me. A dream close to impossible in my homeland.
What about you? Would you visit Tottori’s dunes? Or have you already had the luck to walk on the snow at Pyla?
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