Photo/Illutration Ephemeral sand sculptures, including art inspired by Egypt, are gathered in a vast room at the Tottori Sand Museum. Elaborate sculptures made of only sand and water are on exhibit, with a new theme every year. (Photo by Lisa Vogt)

I wonder how many readers of this column have seen their TV screens turn into a sandstorm.

Back when TVs were analog, every time a storm blew down the antenna on your roof or your cat knocked down the rabbit ears atop your TV, your screen would show black-and-white noise and emit a static sound.

I love the way it’s called in Japanese--“suna-no-arashi!”

In ancient times, many people who made their living capturing waterfowl lived in Tottori Prefecture, hence the name. The prefecture also boasts one of Japan’s largest sand dunes created thousands of years ago.

Sand. What exactly is it and where did it come from? And why can we see "Arabian Nights" in Tottori? I’m glad you asked.

Sand formed when rocks from the Chugoku mountains slowly decomposed and traveled down the Sendaigawa river, ultimately dumping into the sea. Powerful Sea of Japan winds and strong currents pushed the sand back up along the coastline, producing a fascinating desert mirage.

The tourist draw includes camel rides at 1,500 yen ($11.78) per person for four minutes--carrying a person on its back is not very “rakuda,” or an easy job, for a camel. OK, pay up and snap those pics!

I was told that the most popular camel there shares my name, Lisa, and that she came from ... the Netherlands. Huh? Not the Middle East. The camels weren’t there when I visited, darn.

Tottori Sand Dunes Museum is the only indoor museum in the world dedicated to exhibiting sand sculptures. Every year, artists from around the globe produce monumental 3-D masterpieces based on a theme. The massive sculptures are destroyed each January and are refashioned for an April reopening.

Gazing at the dunes and the enormous imposing sculptures in the museum, I was reminded of the impermanence and connectedness of everything. The TV static never stays the same, but the desert sand is constantly moving and sand sculptures will shape-shift.

It’s wondrous to think that the suna-no-arashi is said to be actually random radio waves that stem from the remnant radiation from the Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago. And desert sand, like ocean waves, rolls and bounces.

And these self-organizing individual grains create ever-shifting wave-shaped ripples on the dune’s surface. And human hands form images that awe and inspire using fine mineral particles, sand.

The least populous prefecture, Tottori, produces the most "rakkyo," small crunchy pickled scallion bulbs soaked in sweetened vinegar, in the country. They are a peculiar vegetable grown along barren sand dunes.

Oh, my “sunadokei” sand clock shows the time is up.

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This article by Lisa Vogt, a Washington-born and Tokyo-based photographer, originally appeared in the Dec. 18 issue of Asahi Weekly. It is part of the series "Lisa’s Wanderings Around Japan," which depicts various places across the country through the perspective of the author, a professor at Meiji University.

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