Hokuei, Tottori

The train pulls into Yura Station and the first thing you notice is the name painted across the platform — "Conan Station" — a tribute to the manga artist Aoyama Gosho, who grew up here. Along the roughly 1.5-kilometer Conan Street stretching from the station, bronze figures stand at intervals and a recreation of the Baker Street detective agency occupies a storefront. It is an unusual overlay on a small agricultural town, yet it sits alongside the older fabric without entirely displacing it.

North of the station, the land opens toward a long dune coast facing the Sea of Japan. This is the Hokujō sand dune shore, and the grapes grown in its sandy soil go into bottles at the Hokujō Wine Brewery, one of the earlier established wineries in western Japan. Alongside the wine, watermelon, rakkyo, and nashi pear are grown across the Hokujō plain, shaped by the Yura and Tenjin rivers. The 北栄砂丘まつり draws the town together around this coastal strip each year.

Inland, near the southern edge of town, the earthworks of the Yura Daiba — a coastal defense installation from the final years of the Edo period — remain intact: a long earthen rampart, still standing at considerable height, designated a national historic site. The Saio family residence, a protected cultural property, adds another layer to a town that has quietly accumulated its own record without making too much of it.