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"Nam2@7676" some rights reserved. flickr

Can you guess where this picture was taken? In The Sahara or The Gobi desert? No 😉 This beautiful desert is located in Western Japan’s Tottori prefecture. Actually, it’s not a huge dessert like the Sahara or Gobi, but rather a smaller (still over 30 square km) collection of sand dunes. Today, let me introduce Tottori prefecture.

To tell you the truth, Tottori is the least populous and one of the most modest prefectures in Japan. People often can’t remember it until they try to say all of Japan’s 47 prefectures but get stuck on it as the final one. I have never been there, and don’t have any friends from there, and I have never heard of anybody being from Tottori. What’s more, Tottori is the only prefecture which doesn’t have Starbucks Coffee. (Ironically, it’s becoming known as the prefecture with no Starbucks…)

So, the sand dunes I mentioned above are Tottori’s No.1 (and maybe only one?) selling point! Taking full advantage of this mini-desert, Tottori constructed Japan’s only open-air sand sculpture museum in 2006. Look at these splendid artworks! I just can’t believe these are all made of sand (*_*)!

"the.muwan" some rights reserved. flickr

"the.muwan" some rights reserved. flickr

According to their official website, the materials are just sand and water, making the gigantic sculptures quite fragile. Still, the evanescent beauty of these formations attracts plenty of visitors. The museum is now exhibiting sand sculptures with a South-East Asia theme until January of 2014. Please do visit there if you have a chance to go to Tottori!!

http://www.sand-museum.jp/en/ (The Sand Museum official website)

-Junko
http://helemalie.tumblr.com/ 

This is JAPAN Style!