Sea Kayaking Japan: A Salty Dog’s Tale
The last visit to Perfect Cove in Tottori Prefecture
Take three officers of the Japanese Coast Guard, four members of the Tottori Prefectural Fire Brigade, one San’in Kaigan National Park ranger, two plain-clothes detectives, and two uniformed officers from Tottori Prefectural Police Department, and what do you have?
You have a posse worthy of netting the wiliest gang of boat diesel thieves, jet ski-jackers, or shellfish pilferers.
Only, one hot August day not so long ago, on a quiet beach in Japan’s least populated prefecture, that’s what was missing from this equation.
Instead, members of aforementioned agencies trudged across hot sand towards two sea kayakers — foreign ones — who sat shirtless and sipping their lunchtime red while watching the remains of a Thai green chicken curry simmer over dying embers.
The agencies carried .38 calibre New Nambu revolvers, radio transceivers, notebooks and pens, fire buckets, and a set of digital scales for weighing stolen shellfish. The kayakers carried a look of bemusement and a vague whiff of Old Spice.
If you think this tale ends with egg on someone’s face, you are correct. But before I tell you whose, first a little background …
I live in Himeji city on the shores of the Seto Inland Sea and have been an avid sea kayaker for almost 23 years. I bought my first boat in 2002 — a folding Folbot Greenland II — and later added an inflatable Advanced Elements Dragonfly 2, both of which I transport inside a car, on ferries, even by train with relative ease.
Since sea kayaking is one of those marine sports where one communes with nature in relative solitude — that is, far from the madding beaches — it seems ironic that I later ended up with four other foreigners who shared the same spirit of adventure and need to escape the urban crush whenever they could.
Our first trip together was calamitous (our camp was swamped by a king tide) but it served as a valuable lesson, while also giving birth to the moniker by which our motley crew would henceforth be known — the Salty Dogs.
For 17 years the ‘Dogs’ weathered squalls, typhoon-driven swells, bow waves, lightning strikes, searing summer heat, equipment failure (broken rudders, punctures, swampings), centipede infestations, hungry racoon-dogs, jellyfish stings, and in one forgettable instance, a boat’s jettisoned catch of stinking sea bass through which we were forced to paddle.
Our roving has taken us across five prefectures, alternating between the Japan Sea and the Seto Inland Sea as the seasonal weather dictated. Now, of the original crew, only myself and Lars (see: Snakes, Squalls and Dr. Seuss) remain.
So it was, in August not so long ago, that Lars and I bundled our inflatable boats, beer, and bread into an old model rental car and made our way north to Iwami on the Uradome coast of the Japan Sea.
Tottori Prefecture is home to Japan’s only sand dune system — the Tottori Sand Dunes — beyond which the shimmering beaches fade into craggy headlands, sheltered bays, quiet fishing villages and ports.
This is a sea kayaker’s heaven.
Shaped by volcanic and tectonic forces over millennia, the Uradome coastline is riddled with sea caves, natural archways, and tiny coves which are only accessible by watercraft. With visibility to 20 metres in depth, it’s no surprise that local outdoor adventure companies offer tours using transparent canoes.
Lars and I are not tourists; we leave only footprints, take only photos, carry out whatever garbage we generate, and the only thing see-thru is our threadbare swimwear.
Overnight trips mean carrying our own water, tents, gas cookers, dining utensils, and food. Meals are pre-planned and a typical three-day trip’s fare might consist of marinated chicken wings, souvlaki with Tzatziki sauce, honey-lamb sausages, ham omelette on toasted muffins, Thai curry, and ember-roasted sweet potatoes. Once, on a rainy Golden Week trip, our spirits were lifted with roast pork and vegetables cooked in a Māori-style earth oven.
For over a decade, a tiny cove hidden among the forested outcrops near Iwami town has been our destination. Sheltered from the open sea by a narrow opening in the rocks, and accessible only to small craft, it also harbours two grottos, one of which can be used to shelter in heavy weather. We call this secret gem ‘Perfect Cove’ and its slip of sand which tapers into clear, deep water brings to mind the paradisiacal setting of author Alex Garland’s cult backpacker classic, The Beach.
Due to sand-shifting typhoons, the beach either shrinks or grows each year. So, when Lars and I put in, we were dismayed to find precious little sand to park our tents on. This forced us to paddle on to the next bay with a larger beach offering public access by a forested path from a mountainside carpark.
Approaching from the sea, we saw no signs that prohibited beach camping; neither did we know that this stretch of coastline which we had been visiting for the past 15 years had recently been designated a UNESCO site — the San’in Kaigan National Park — and that no camping is allowed.
I’m all for marine parks; they curb pollution, protect marine life against exploitation, and heighten awareness of the value of maintaining healthy ecosystems. However, a UNESCO listing doesn’t necessarily temper the number of visitors to paradise. Lars and I were taken aback at the daily flotillas of kayaking school kids, paddle boarders, and groups of beach picnickers that had been missing in previous years.
Madding crowds be damned, we fell into our old routine of exploring sea caves filled with horseshoe bats and snorkelling off the craggy headlands, ending our days with sumptuous campfire dinners, accompanied by wine and a night sky full of shooting stars.
On our final day, we packed our kayaks for the return trip to Iwami where the rental car was parked, and for sustenance, heated a pot of Thai curry and toasted naan bread over a pile of embers.
It was about this time that Tottori’s finest emerged from the undergrowth. Not one, but nine uniformed members from four prefectural agencies, all of them red-faced and sweating heavily under the August sun.
Lars and I quickly dressed for visitors and rose to meet them. With formalities aside, their questions flew at us like a swarm of hornets:
What were we doing here? How did we arrive? How long had we been camping? Where did we come from? What had we been eating? Did we have any shellfish (abalone, turban shell, oysters) in our possession?
We swatted these back with polite replies, and on the final question, I opened my cooler box for them to inspect. As they peered inside, I sensed their immediate deflation. The police officer in charge turned away from the empty container.
‘Seafood?’ he asked, nodding at the dregs of the Thai green curry.
‘Chicken,’ I said.
He chuckled lightly.
The marine park ranger looked unimpressed. He placed down the heavy digital weighing scales, useless without stolen shellfish, and wiped the sweat from his brow. Meanwhile, the four fire brigade officers stood about holding buckets, as if wondering what to do next. In the end, Lars and I extinguished the embers ourselves with sea water, apologising for the trouble caused and promised to bury the charred wood and return the stones to their original positions before we left.
To conclude, there was no Mexican standoff but rather an acknowledgment of a mutual misunderstanding followed by an embarrassing withdrawal for all those involved, except Lars and I (who had nowhere to withdraw to). We felt sorry for the park ranger who sheepishly returned moments later to collect his scales which he’d forgotten.
As Lars and I paddled back to Iwami, we wondered aloud why there hadn’t been any signs on the beach and why we hadn’t been asked for our Residence (Zairyu) Cards — standard police procedure in Hyogo.
We wondered too soon. Back at the carpark, two plain-clothes detectives from the Tottori Police Department were waiting for us. Young, polite, and collared in white shirts with pressed blue trousers, they apologised for their colleagues not having requested to see our ID cards back on the beach. This set in motion a war of apologies, ending with Lars and I proffering our details which were duly noted down.
We were then free to leave.
Admittedly, crossing back into Hyogo an hour later was a scene right out of Thelma and Louise. We high-fived and punched the cool mountain air, happy to be home.
Lars and I consider ourselves ‘old salts’ who are still young at heart, and as such, we’ve learned to take all misadventures with a grain of … ahem, salt.
I now accept the fact that we can never return to Perfect Cove to camp, swim, cook, and cleanse our minds and bodies of all the stresses which come with city living like we once used to.
So, here it is: 35°35'47.9" N, 134°20'18.3" E.
Enjoy!
Simon Rowe is author of Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere (Mighty Tales, 2020) and Mami Suzuki: Private Eye (Penguin, 2023)
