Jenn, Empress of the Desert

As mentioned in the last post, Jenn and I got in a lot of traveling in a relatively (read: insanely) short period of time, opting for an overnight trip to Funkytown Japan and a camping trip to Desert World in the same week.  Tottori, located on the sea of Japan, is actually the least populous prefecture in the country, with a population of just holy-cow-that's-a-lot-of-people.  We opted to spend our 36 hours there mostly in the prefectural capital, Tottori (imaginative people, the Japanese).

When I informed my coworkers, friends, and neighbors that we took a trip to Tottori, responses ranged from "...Huh," to "Really?  Tottori?" (they said the same thing about Tokushima, as it happens).  As always, it seems our travel destination calculations were flawless. Wikitravel, our go-to free, mostly accurate, and above all, free travel guide, opens its section on Tottori with a description of a bleak Japanese tragic novel about a desert town that imprisons visitors in an enormous sand pit and forces them to dig for their lives.  It then goes on to point out that Tottori's locals "are certainly friendly — and thoroughly unlikely to strand you at the bottom of a sand pit."  *Cue "Vacation" by The Go-Gos*

As long as we were cramming new experiences into as short a time as possible, we also opted to camp rather than pay for a hotel.  This was the first time that Jenn and I had done anything related to camping that doesn't involve the Rocky Horror Picture Show, so we were thrilled at all the possibilities that awaited us in the exciting field of sleeping out of doors.  What new bugs and/or poisonous plants would we discover in our sleeping bags?  I borrowed the necessary equipment from a coworker, promising that we would return it in pristine condition barring any unforeseen circumstances such as dirt.

On the first day of our trip, we fell out of the early-morning bus and promptly made plans to leave town: according to Wikitravel, in a nearby village was a beach that was made up of a special silica sand that, so the legends go, "sings" under one's feet on a hot day.  After the slowest train ride we've ever experienced in Japan (the train was ten whole minutes late, if you can believe such an atrocity) and an hour-long hike around twisting, pedestrian-hostile roads, we found our way to Idegahama Beach.  The sand, while pleasant, was remarkable in its resemblance to all other sand on the planet.  With one exception, that is: due to the sand's ultrafine nature, we are still turning it up in our shoes, pockets, suitcases, and hair.  No singing.

Thanks to another late train, we made it to our campground approximately an hour after the sun had gone down, so we proceeded to play my favorite game: Assemble an Unfamiliar Tent in the Dark.  I can only assume that we won, though I may have broken the rules when I frantically called the tent's owner and begged for help.

The next morning, we packed up our numerous heavy possessions and set off for Tottori Dunes, which our map claimed was adjacent to the campground. Indeed, just a short walk took us to the Western end of the Dunes.  Most of the attractions, including the largest dune and the guest center (including the restaurant and restrooms) were on the Eastern end.  Pay attention, there will be a quiz on this in a bit.

The Tottori Dunes, which are legally required to be described as either "majestic" or "mysterious," are Tottori's main tourist draw.  Tourists flock from across Japan and all over -- well, OK, just Japan, really -- to visit the Tottori Sand Dunes and...look at them, I guess.  They're good for looking at.  You can also get your picture taken while riding a camel, but we ruled out this option from the start; I established a firm "no camels" policy when Jenn and I first moved in together, and I see no reason to revisit it years later (unless camels have stopped being total fuckers at some point in the last 5 years).  So, no camels for us, then, but fortunately for we city-weary travelers, the Dunes also abutted the ocean, meaning one side of them was a lovely beach (this kind of undercut the Mystery of the Dunes for me).

So, finding ourselves at the edge of the Dunes, we decided to take what appeared to be a short hike down the dunes to the beach rather than make the long trek Eastward to the visitor's center.

Our spirits at the outset, as you can see, were high and glamorous.  The beach was only a quick 20 minute stumble down the huge mountains of sand.  When we got to the water's edge, where we planned to relax and plan out the rest of our day, we were shocked to see that the beach was all but abandoned.  What suckers, these Japanese tourists!  What were they thinking, paying huge sums of money to sit on a resentful pack animal and get their picture taken when there was beautiful nature right in front of them?

After a nice, leisurely swim, we packed up our possessions once again and set off to climb the dunes back to the bus stop, near where we had camped the night before.  It was right about then when the fatigue set in; as it turns out, it's considerably harder to climb UP an enormous mound of sand than to shuffle down it.  Within 10 minutes, we had expended all of our energy.  Within 20, we had finished the last of the water we brought.  After 25 minutes we had turned into every cliche of dying of thirst in the desert we had ever seen in the movies (you know, "go on without me, can't go on any longer," imagining each other with a hamburger for a head, etc.).  In all, it took us about an hour and a half to get back to the top of the hill. By the time we got back to the city center, we had earned sunburns that actually radiated 6 inches away from our bodies.  Deserts, it seemed, were not your average vacation spot for a reason.

At last, Pismo Beach!  And all the sand we can eat!

It will be a long, long time before we plan a vacation around the concept that there is a lot of sand somewhere.