Tottori City

Is it a city near the sea or the sea near a city? It’s your choice I guess. Tottori City is the expected and unexpected really. The capital of Tottori prefecture with around 200,000 residents and the first thing I realized was that none of the buildings seemed to be more than two stories high. What a relief really,having lived in some of worlds biggest metropolises lead me to believe that it wasn’t necessary to have one in every corner of the earth.

Low buildings mean the sunlight hits the streets so Tottori is a very bright place. Another thing you notice is the sand in the city. If you look in places where you would normally expect to find grass you find sand in Tottori. A beach town prefectural capital makes the scattering of government offices bearable. Highway road signs are in Japanese, English and Korean showing the city’s desire to accommodate visitors. The beach is the best part. It’s wide and pristine and when you look into the distance all you can see are a few rock outcroppings that have broken through the surface of the sea. The aquamarine hue of the Japan Sea when viewed with the naked eye would put any postcard to shame.