Sand Festival at Shirarahama Beach

Each summer, the famous white sands of Shirarahama Beach in Shirahama become an open-air gallery for the Sunamatsuri Taikai, the "Sand Festival" – a sculpture contest in which teams shape elaborate works using nothing but sand and seawater.

The premise is simple but demanding: working within a marked-out plot, each team builds a three-dimensional sculpture using only the beach's fine white sand, dampened and held together with seawater carried up from the shore by bucket. The theme is free, so entries range widely – animals, buildings, scenes from stories – limited only by each team's imagination and skill.

Because the works use natural sand alone, with nothing added and everything cleared away afterward, the festival is an environmentally gentle one, treading lightly on the beach it celebrates.

Sculpting runs through the morning, with work stopping at 12:30, when judging begins; results and an award ceremony follow at 14:00. The finished works are judged purely on their craftsmanship, and the top three teams take home prizes, though every participating team goes home with something.