Amanohashidate

Bend over, look back through your legs, and the pine-covered sandbar lifts off the water into the sky. This is the prescribed way to see Amanohashidate — one of Japan's three most celebrated views — and visitors have been doing it for centuries with varying degrees of dignity. Right way up, it is a long spit of sand and pine across the mouth of Miyazu Bay. Upside down, it is a bridge to heaven.

Amanohashidate has been ranked among Japan's three most scenic views for centuries, alongside Miyajima and Matsushima. The sandbar closes the mouth of Miyazu Bay on the Sea of Japan coast of northern Kyoto Prefecture, and the way to see it is from the hills at either end: from Kasamatsu Park on the north side, reached by a lift, where the mata-nozoki 'through-the-legs' viewing is the tradition, or from the viewpoint above the southern shore. Then you cross it — on foot or by hired bicycle — through a corridor of black pines, beaches to seaward and the bay to landward, from Chionji temple at the southern foot to the mountain temple of Nariaiji above the north. Excursion boats circle the bay, and the fishing ports along this coast land the Tango snow crab that fills the winter rice bowls.