A Japanese Dream

I was road-tripping around the northernmost tip of Honshu, Japan's main island. It's a big axe-shaped peninsula, curling out into the water between Honshu and Hokkaido. We'd just been to try a $40 bowl of tuna - the freshest in the world, they say - at a tiny village called Oma, and we were now travelling down the blade of the axe.
We arrived at our destination, a place called Hotoke-ga-ura that we'd been told we had to see. As we parked the minivan at the start of the trail down, we were unimpressed. 'It's just a beach,' we thought, peering over the cliff to a little cove. But we'd come a long way, so we made our way down.
I don't like to exaggerate, but what we found can only be described as magical.
It had just finished raining, so the clouds were stained purple and grey. The sun was hidden behind them, bathing everything in a gauzy white light. Where it did manage to escape, it pierced the sky with golden beams.
We stood on flat rocks, just above the sea that extended out forever in front of us. The water was a soft blue, dissipating into foam as it approached and spread over the rocks. The sand had turned a spongy hazelnut brown under the rain. We picked our way through giant rock formations, which gave the place its name after their resemblance to 'hotoke', the Japanese word for Buddha statues. They had the effect of sectioning off the beach into natural rooms, like a maze.
It felt like we were standing in a painting - a patch of the world chosen for its beauty and preserved that way forever, frozen in time and hanging on the wall of a museum. Every picture we took came out perfect, and no-one else was around.
It was surreal, dreamlike, and by far the most beautiful place I've ever been. It goes to show that the best travel destinations aren't necessarily the ones out of guidebooks - the ones that other people have decided are their favourites. The best ones are the ones that YOU remember.