Nichinan, Tottori

The mountains of the Chugoku range press close here, and the valleys between them carry the sound of water — the Hino River threading through a basin landscape that sits well above the coastal plains. Nichinan-cho occupies this interior quietly, its fields given over to rice and tomatoes, its slopes to timber. At the roadside station Nichiman Hinokawa-no-Sato, a soft-serve made from local tomatoes sits on the counter — an odd combination until you taste it, the sweetness cut with something almost vegetal, faintly acidic.

The timber industry runs deep here. The Hinokawa-no-Mori Mokuzai Danchi processes and distributes lumber on a scale that shapes the local economy, and LVL manufacturing — laminated veneer lumber — gives the forest its industrial afterlife. But older industries leave their mark too: tatara iron smelting and the silver workings of the Hakushu silver mine once drew people into these mountains, and the town still carries that layered sense of extraction and craft.

On the slopes of Senzu-san, a yew tree of extraordinary age stands as a nationally designated natural monument — its presence less ornamental than geological, something that predates the myths surrounding it. Those myths are not trivial: this is the territory of the Yamata-no-Orochi legend, where Susanoo is said to have drawn the sword Ame-no-Murakumo. The mountain and its waterfall, Torigami-no-Taki, hold that story without performing it.