Shirahma means “white beach,” which is appropriate because one of the city’s main attractions is its crescent-shaped white-sand beach. The city devoted considerable resources to maintaining the whiteness of the sand. Every afternoon municipal workers in blue suits and caps walked the length at the beach with picks and plastic bags, collecting litter and seaweed. The city’s vigilance derived from its alarm what for several decades its beach has been disappearing. In the 1960s, when Shirahama was connected by rail to Okasa, the city became a popular tourist destination, and blocky white hotel towers rose along the costal road. The increased development accelerated erosion, and the famous sand began to wash into the sea. Worried that the town of White Beach would lose its white beach, Wakayama Perfecture began in1989 to import sand from Perth, Australia, forty-seven hundred miles away. Shirahama has since dumped several hundred and fifty thousand cubic meters of Aussie sand on its beach, preserving its everlasting whiteness - - for now. ~ Page 256
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Dinesh said: