Sand skiing in Tateyama, Chiba 館山のサンドスキー

Tateyama Chiba color brochure vintage travel

Tateyama 館山, at the southern tip of Chiba’s Bōsō Peninsula 房総半島 (map) is probably overlooked by most Tokyoites. Too close for vacation, yet too far for a day trip to be convenient. I’ve never been. But now I want to, courtesy of a vintage tourist brochure I picked up at a Shimbashi flea market.

Sand skiing サンドスキー

The most amusing part of the brochure is a picture of sand skiing. It’s captioned 砂山, which means sandpile (sunayama).

I thank these old-timey sand skiers for letting me know about this diversion. The Tateyama city website (in Japanese) provides information and directions to the sand skiing site. As seen in satellite images, the sand still gets good use. The dunes are situated just north (inland) of the Tateyama Country Club 館山カントリークラブ. There are two slopes, both located here (map).

Here’s a brief video:

And after a day of sand skiing, you’ll probably want to cool off at the beach. Or you may want to skip the sand skiing entirely…

Getting to Tateyama

There used to be a ferry from Tokyo to Tateyama (pier seen above), but today it’s a little more complicated. You can recreate some of the magic by taking the Tokyo Wan Ferry from Kurihama 久里浜 (south of Yokohama) to Kanaya 金谷, in Chiba (map). It takes 35 minutes from Hama-Kanaya Station 浜金谷駅 to Tateyama Station 館山駅 via the Uchibo line 内房線. The beach scene in the brochure is located approximately here (map).