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San'in Kaigan NP, Kyoto
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
At Yuhigaura, the sunset’s destination changes with the calendar: from spring through summer it drops into the Sea of Japan; in fall and winter it sinks behind the western mountains.
Winter crab has a cross-border local story: Hamazume inns serve Matsuba crab landed in Kyoto’s Tango area, as well as fresh catches from neighboring Hyogo.
On a dune just inland from this shore, Hamazume Site preserves a 3,000–4,000-year-old Jomon settlement—the only confirmed Jomon shell-mound site in Kyoto Prefecture.
Every autumn, Hamazume residents put up coastal sand screens to keep winter winds and rough seas from driving beach sand onto roads. When the work is done, crab season begins.
The nearby Jomon shell mound held abalone and clams, puffer and tuna bones, plus remains of deer, boar, dolphin and whale. Acorns were probably a staple, too.
Yuhigaura first named the rugged, indented rocks at the shore’s eastern end; today the name is commonly used for the broader Hamazume beach, too.
A 1915 Tango County gazetteer calls this area “Yuhigaura, also known as Tokoyo no Hama” and records waka poems naming Yuhinoura—a poetic past behind the sunset coast.
Yuhigaura joins the Shōtenkyō sandbar in a connected 8-kilometer sweep of white sand and pines, described by San’in Geopark as North Kinki’s largest long beach.
A local base for SUP and other ocean activities occupies a converted Tango chirimen weaving factory. Its exposed beams recall Hamazume’s silk-making past.
Yuhigaura offers universal SUP: an amphibious wheelchair helps visitors with mobility disabilities and older people cross the sand and reach the water.
Before summer beach season opens, Hamazume holds a ceremony praying for swimmers’ safety—a local ritual that marks the start of seaside season.
