The Tottori Sand Dunes

I had read that the Tottori sand dunes extended 16 kilometers and so I imagined what I had experienced in Brazil's North East: Strolling along for hours pretty much by myself. Well, not exactly. Tourist destinations in Asia are rarely a solitary affair. The bus to the dunes was packed with Asians. Probably all Chinese, I joked to the French couple that I had started talking to at the bus station.

Like almost always when travellers meet, they spoke of all the other places they had visited. South Korea, for instance, that they deemed, very much to my suprise, more modern, more advanced than Japan, for my picture of South Korea was that of Japanese friends for whom South Korea was simply a cheaper version of Japan. Also, a young Spanish couple came to mind who had observed that while in Japan hardly anybody speaks English, in South Korea nobody speaks English. 

The elderly French couple says that in Japan they were never spoken to, in Korea however they were always asked lots of questions. My own Japanese experience is completely different. I particularly remember two curious female students, one studied Chinese culture, the other globalisation.

It doesn't cease to baffle me how the mind works, or, more precisely, how "my" mind works for when the bus came to a halt in front of a souvenir shop I automatically felt reminded of my first visit to Japan six years ago when I had penned the following: "When in Oami, I learned that the famous 99-mile-beach was a 30-minute bus ride from the station and that there was also a hotel. I imagined a ride through vast fields to a lonely old hotel sitting on a cliff ... well, it was a ride through a stretch of suburbs and the hotel turned out to be a huge complex that seemed to cater to a variety of Japanese entertainment and shopping needs. My own shopping? Sushi and leechee juice, every day." Needless to say, our expectations are much more in control of our lifes than we imagine.

There was also a sand museum and I briefly wondered what it would exhibit and assumed it would be the usual display of information about how it once was, what it became, and how the future will probably look like. I find the human inclination to hold on to the past increasingly strange for it seems to hinder us to experience what we are experiencing: to be here and there and everywhere very much at the same time.