TOTTORI -- Ever felt like traveling just to gratify your tastebuds? To Italy for real pizza, for example, or to India for authentic curry. Well, if your craving is for crustaceans, then you can look rather closer to home. Delicious snow crabs are now in season, and there's no better place to sample them than Tottori Prefecture, on the Sea of Japan coast in western Honshu.
Snow crabs get a different name according to where they are caught. In Niigata Prefecture they are called echizengani, while those landed in Tottori are known as matsubagani.
Tottori City is most famous for its immense sand dunes, which front the Sea of Japan, but this time of year, the kilometers of swept-up sand won't be what first catch your eye. Instead you'll be assailed from all directions by signs advertising matsubagani, on sale everywhere.