By the Seaside on the Japan Sea

As the summer heat finally begins to dissipate – it’s in the mid 80’s now rather than the mid 90’s – and everyone returns from vacation, it’s a great time to relax by the sea.  Rather than the Pacific, I decided to travel along the Japan Sea, which faces Asia and is considerably less populated than Japan’s eastern shore.   Yes, there was a renowned castle in Matsue, a gorgeous garden in Yasugi, and a couple of wonderful museums, but I’d rather show you the beauty of the seacoast. 

But first, a bit on an end-of-summer ritual, namely harvesting the rice crop.  I have been watching the rice grow ever since I’ve come here, fascinated as the fields are plowed, planted, and cared for over these many months.   For the past few weeks I have watched the rice grow golden in the hot sun, and now I’ve been watching the harvest. 

Just as with the planting, there are relatively small machines that cut the rice and separate the grain from the stalks.  Afterwards I can see the empty fields, each rice plant still evident and the stalks set out to dry, sometimes in little stacks, sometimes on a series of horizontal poles hung from posts in the field.  Rice is such an important part of the way of life here.  It binds one closely to the land and the seasons.

Bridge & sand bar from my window

Now to the sea:  I spent just a day at Amanohashidate, but I wish it had been longer. I stayed in a lovely inn where my room overlooked the water and a maple tree whose leaves were beginning to turn.  I had a gourmet kaiseki dinner with nine small courses of delicious food.

My real reason for coming, though, was Amanohashidate’s pine-tree-covered sand bar, one of Japan’s three great scenic vistas.  It stretches across the town’s cove, with a path through the trees to cross it and a sandy beach facing the sea.  At the end of the day teenagers were playing and people out walking as I was, enjoying the view.  The next morning I got up early to watch the sun rise over the pine trees, then strolled along the beach from one end of the cove to the other.  I saw a flock of small birds digging in the sand for insects and a couple of 2” translucent grabs grabbing on to a dead 6” fish and eating away.  I watched a lone boat head out to sea and a crow walk the beach, seemingly on patrol.  What a wonderful way to greet the day!

I then took a train down the coast for several hours to Tottori, the capital of the prefecture by the same name.  Its claim to fame is its sand dunes, which are no ordinary dunes.  They don’t stretch for miles as the dunes do along the Hamptons on Long Island.  They’re several kilometers long and very, very tall. To get to the sea, you have to climb up the dunes, which then fall almost cliff-like to the sea below.  They reminded me a bit of Niagara Falls and the drop to the river. 

I watched people climb up one side of the dunes, go down to the sea, then trudge slowly back up again, something I decided to forego.  I also decided not to do the touristy thing and ride one of the available camels.  Instead, I spent hours mostly sitting on the top of the dunes and looking out to the sea, watching the sky with its puffy clouds.  I left smiling and refreshed.

 Last, I spent a few days in Matsue, also a prefectural capital.  It’s got a great castle and was the home of Lefcadio Hearn, a Greco-Irish English professor who fell in love with Japan, stayed, and wrote some very insightful books about Japan in the late 1800’s.  Though Matsue is not really on the sea, it’s surrounded by water:  it sits between two lakes and has a river and a maze of canals running through it.  My last day here turned out to be beautifully sunny, so I walked to the lake to watch the sun set along with many others, including a bride and groom getting their wedding pictures taken.   It was fun to sit with other people from town, some with small children, as we all watched, and took pictures of the sun, the sky, and the sea.  What a lovely way to end my mini-vacation by the sea.