You’d be forgiven for thinking you’d landed in the Middle East, but these are the Tottori Sand Dunes, wedged along the coast of Japan’s sparsely populated San’in region, the country’s very own slice of desert.
The dunes extend 16 kilometers (10 miles) across the coast, with their tallest peaks jutting over 45 meters (150 feet) high. They’ve been around for thousands of years, but are slowly disappearing because of climate change. The Tottori dunes are located on the western coast of Honshu, Japan’s largest and most populous island.
Tottori is Japan’s least populous prefecture. Osaka is about 200 km (124 miles) away; Hiroshima is 300 km (186) miles in the other direction.
The dunes were formed over the course of 100,000 years, as sand transported from the nearby Chūgoku Mountains via the Sendai River was deposited into the Sea of Japan. Over the centuries, wind and currents moved the sand back onto the shore.
The dunes were relatively unknown to those outside of Tottori until 1923, when they made their way into the writings of famed Japanese author Takeo Arishima, which sparked their ascent to a tourism hotspot.
Today, the dunes are a central fixture of Tottori prefecture’s tourism industry, hosting an average of 1.2 million visitors per year. Tourists can visit a Sand Museum, go sandboarding and ride camels.
The dunes bring in millions each year in tourism earnings, but there’s a catch: they’re shrinking. The Tottori Sand Dunes are just 12% of the size that they were 100 years ago.
