Hamamatsu · JP

Murakushi Beach (Murakushi Seaside Bathing Beach)

Murakushi Beach (村櫛海水浴場) is one of Hamamatsu's designated swimming beaches, but it sits on Lake Hamana, the city's vast brackish lagoon, rather than on the open Pacific. Set along the quiet southern shore near the tip of the Shonai Peninsula, it has the look and feel of a low-key local waterfront rather than a resort beach: wide, glassy shallows, a scattering of windsurfers, anglers working the mudflats, and views stretching across the lake toward the hills. Its most unusual feature is the format. There is no broad sandy slope here; instead the shore is so shallow that swimmers climb down a ladder from the seawall and wade out over the sandbank. The result is a beach best understood less as a place to sunbathe and more as a place to get in the water and do something: swim, dig for clams, fish, or sail a board across the lagoon.