Tottori

Tottori is Japan's least populous prefecture, a strip of coast and mountains on the Sea of Japan in western Honshu. Its improbable signature is sand: the country's largest dunes roll along the shore here, ridges of bare gold that feel borrowed from another continent.

You can cross the Tottori Sand Dunes on foot or by camel, then try a sandboard run toward the beach. The Sand Museum next door carves world monuments from the same grains, rebuilt around a new theme each year, and bronze yokai statues line Mizuki Shigeru Road in the port of Sakaiminato.

Mount Daisen raises a Fuji-like profile over the prefecture's west, hiked in summer and skied in winter, and Matsuba crab rules the tables from late autumn. Limited express trains reach Tottori from Okayama and Osaka. The dunes photograph best early, before the day's footprints accumulate.