Amanohashidate, Sandbar in Miyazu, Japan

Amanohashidate is a 3.6-kilometre sandbar separating Miyazu Bay from the inner Aso Sea, 20 to 170 metres wide and split into the Otenkyo, Kotenkyo and Second Kotenkyo sections. A belt of pines, largely self-sown rather than planted, runs along it, with a white sand beach on the eastern side. The Kotenkyo bridge over the canal rotates 90 degrees to let boats pass.

Around 2,200 years ago an earthquake sent sediment into Miyazu Bay, and the sandbar emerged above the surface; the Ohashi section was completed by currents between the Heian period and the mid-Edo period, and the smaller Koshashi formed from the late Edo period into the early Meiji era. In 1922 it was designated a Place of Scenic Beauty and in 1952 a Special Place of Scenic Beauty.

The name comes from the Tango no Kuni Fudoki: the god Izanagi built a ladder to visit the shrine at Manaihara, and it fell while he slept, becoming the sandbar. Visitors still perform the matanozoki at Kasamatsu Park and Hiryukan, bending over to view the ridge as a bridge to heaven.

You can access the sandbar on foot, by bicycle, or by boat from either shoreline. Observation platforms on the surrounding hills provide views of the curved shape and the forested ridge from above.

A traditional local practice involves bending forward and looking at the formation upside down between your legs to see it transform into a floating bridge in the sky. This viewing method has been used for generations and remains a common ritual among visitors today.