Yonago

A 1,729m mountain shaped like Fuji when seen from the west, hence its name Hoki Fuji. The summer trail takes 5-6 hours up and back, and around the summit you must keep to the boardwalk to protect a dwarf yew colony that is a special natural monument.

Beside Daisen-ji a path of natural stones runs for a little over 700m, the longest such approach in Japan. In rain the stones get very slick, so wear shoes with firm soles, and the main hall is in gongen style with its lacquer and gilt still in place.

A seaside onsen that began in 1900 when a fisherman found hot water welling up in the sea. The salty water keeps the warmth in long after, and most ryokan face Yumigahama beach, so you watch the morning sea from the open-air bath.

A sand spit bowed for nearly 20km between Nakaumi and Miho Bay, backed by pine woods along the shore. Several swimming beaches fill up in summer, and on fine days Daisen shows behind you from anywhere along it.

In Sakaiminato, the cartoonist Mizuki Shigeru's home town, an 800m street from the station is lined with 177 bronze yokai. At night lights cast yokai shadows onto the pavement, and the trains from Yonago carry yokai on their sides and in their station names.

Its garden has topped an American garden journal's ranking of Japanese gardens every year since 2003. You cannot walk in it; you look out through windows used as picture frames. A free shuttle bus runs from Yasugi station.

The keep was pulled down in early Meiji and only the stone walls are left on the hill. Walk 20 minutes from the station and climb for 15 more to the top walls, where Daisen, Nakaumi and the town all appear together.

A bridge across Nakaumi linking Tottori and Shimane, arched high so big ships can pass. The wall-like slope seen in adverts only appears through a telephoto lens from the lakeshore a few km away; driving over, it is not that steep.

One of Japan's largest flower parks, below Daisen, ringed by a 1km glass-roofed corridor that keeps you dry on rainy days. April tulips and June roses are the showiest, and Daisen fills the view beyond the corridor.

A wetland on the Nakaumi shore where whooper swans from Siberia winter from October to March. Telescopes stand at the observation hall's windows so you get close without frightening the birds, and the flocks flying back at dusk are the best part.

A mountain temple on Daisen's flank said to date from 718, once home to about 3,000 monks. Its stone-paved approach runs on past the temple to Ogamiyama Shrine's inner sanctuary, and a few temple lodgings feed their lodgers vegetarian temple fare.

Matsue's castle, 30 minutes from Yonago by JR, one of twelve original keeps standing since the Edo era and a National Treasure since 2015. Horikawa moat boats lower their roofs under low bridges, so passengers duck, and winter boats carry kotatsu heaters.

Shrine of Okuninushi, god of bonds, where the nation's gods are said to gather in the tenth lunar month, which Izumo alone calls the month with gods. A 13m straw rope on the Kaguraden is its emblem; 90 minutes' drive away, it makes a day with Matsue.

A Japanese garden on Daikonshima, an island in Lake Nakaumi famed for peony growing, with blooms in its glasshouses and beds all year. Around the turn of April into May tens of thousands of peony heads float on the pond, its busiest weeks.

Opened in 1995 in the Hoki fields at Daisen's foot, this museum holds the work of Tottori-born Shoji Ueda, famed for staged sand dune portraits. A giant lens window throws Daisen's reflection from the pond upside down, and it closes for part of each winter.