Shirahama Beach

Shirahama is on the Kii peninsula in Wakayama prefecture, about two hours south of Osaka. The name means white beach, and the beach is six hundred metres of pale sand at the centre of a hot-spring resort town that has been operating since the seventh century.

The sand is Australian. Shirahama's own white sand eroded away over the twentieth century, and from 1989 the town imported quartz sand from Western Australia to rebuild the beach, in shipments repeated since. It is one of the more literal examples anywhere of a resort buying back its defining feature, and the town is entirely open about it.

The bay is sheltered and shallow with calm water and a gradual entry, warm enough to swim from roughly May to September. What makes Shirahama unusual is the combination with the onsen: Sakinoyu, an open-air hot spring on the rocks at the southern end of the bay, has been in use for over a thousand years and is mentioned in eighth-century records. Bathing there is done in the traditional way, in full view of the sea and without swimwear.

Development is a full Japanese resort town: hotels with their own baths, a promenade, an adventure park with pandas, and the Sandanbeki sea cliffs south of the town. The beach is free and public with a defined swimming season. Engetsu Island offshore has a hole worn through its middle that the sun sets directly into on certain days of the year, which the town publishes a calendar for.

The town's own white sand washed away and it has been importing Australian quartz by the shipload since 1989, which it says openly. The better claim is Sakinoyu, an open-air hot spring on the rocks at the end of the bay, in use for more than a thousand years and bathed in the traditional way.