Travel News No more graffiti on Tottori sand dunes

[thomas]

The curse of mass tourism, or rather, Instagram: Tottori Prefecture started to enforce a prefectural ordinance banning graffiti on the famous sand dunes just outside Tottori City after a recent spike in graffiti incidents. Since 2009, over 3,300 incidents of "sand graffiti" have been recorded.

Tottori Sand Dunes boosts foreign language warnings to curb defacement by tourists - The Mainichi

TOTTORI -- The Tottori Sand Dunes, a major attraction here and one of the only environments of its kind in Japan, is increasing its foreign visitor-ai

mainichi.jp

This graffiti from January 2019 measured 25 by 5 metres and had to be cleaned up by a foreign couple. Natalie must have been delighted.

Against the grain: anger grows at spike in 'sand graffiti' by tourists in Japan

Tottori prefecture to install more foreign-language signs urging visitors not to vandalise dunes

www.theguardian.com

鳥取砂丘で落書き　３５ｍに渡り「ＳＥＢＡＳＴｉＡＮ」：朝日新聞デジタル

　鳥取県は４日、鳥取砂丘（鳥取市）で、外国人の名前とみられる「ＳＥＢＡＳＴｉＡＮ」という英字と顔のような図形が落書きされていたと発表した。　落書きの大きさは縦約３５メートル、横約２７メートル。観光客が…

www.asahi.com

 

[nice gaijin]

good! next on the chopping block is rock-stacking!

 

[Lothor]

Trivial compared with the state-sanctioned mass vandalism of Japan's coastline by concreting over most of it. This morning's 7am news on a wide show devoted over 15 minutes to an ex-pop star being busted for smoking dope, and yesterday Taro Kono was urging the world's media to refer to him as Kono Taro. Do the Japanese ever get worked up about anything that matters? Rant over and back to work!

 

[nice gaijin]

Thanks to jetlag I woke up way too early this morning and caught the tail end of that Kat-Tun story. At first I thought "oh damn a celebrity got caught being naughty! I wonder what he did" and then they were like "he had several grams AND a grinder!! oooooh" They even interviewed a neighbor that was like "they seemed like such a nice young couple"... little did they know that they were such heavy drug users!

Then they repeated the story on multiple channels for the rest of the morning, at least 5 or 6 times before I got fed up. I guess it's a good thing that something like this counts as major news, but even though they knowingly broke the law I couldn't help but feel bad for the guy for getting eviscerated on repeat the whole morning.

 

[Lothor]

Thanks to jetlag I woke up way too early this morning and caught the tail end of that Kat-Tun story. At first I thought "oh damn a celebrity got caught being naughty! I wonder what he did" and then they were like "he had several grams AND a grinder!! oooooh" They even interviewed a neighbor that was like "they seemed like such a nice young couple"... little did they know that they were such heavy drug users!

Then they repeated the story on multiple channels for the rest of the morning, at least 5 or 6 times before I got fed up. I guess it's a good thing that something like this counts as major news, but even though they knowingly broke the law I couldn't help but feel bad for the guy for getting eviscerated on repeat the whole morning.

Did you enjoy the 'experts' wheeled out to solemnly announce what a dangerous drug cannabis is? As for the guy getting eviscerated: no need to worry, the media will soon get distracted by a new popcorn store opening in Harajuku or something equally weighty, so it won't be for long. It's a good example of ostracism in Japanese society at work though, all that name calling, with a 容疑者 roughly once every 15 seconds!