Casual mention elicits enthusiastic response from commonly overlooked tourist destination.

Japan has become one of the world’s top tourist destinations, welcoming a record-breaking 42.7 million international visitors in 2025, a 15.8-percent increase from 2024, and on track to break the record this year. While this is great news for big cities like Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, where tourists tend to spend most of their time and money, there are 44 other prefectures in Japan that are crying out for international visitors, and one of the most in need is Tottori Prefecture.

▼ No hoardes of tourists here.

Home to roughly 530,000-540,000 people, Tottori is the least populous prefecture in Japan. Compared to Tokyo’s roughly 14 million residents, Tottori has about 4 percent of Tokyo’s population, and given its distance from major urban centres, it ranks in the bottom tier for international tourist numbers.

▼ The trip to Tottori takes over five hours by train from Tokyo, using the fastest Shinkansen on the initial leg of the journey.

▼ Alternatively, it’s about three hours by train from Kyoto Station.

Despite the lack of tourists, Tottori has a wealth of tourist attractions, and one person who knows about its charms is Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway. On a recent trip to Japan to promote her new film, The Devil Wears Prada 2, released here on 1 May, Hathaway appeared on the popular weekend morning television program King’s Brunch, where she was asked where in Japan she would like to visit. She replied by saying she would like to visit Tottori, mentioning that she likes the sea, the beaches and the sand dunes.

▼ These are three things Tottori is famous for.

After the show aired on 6 May, it didn’t take long for news of Hathaway’s comments to reach Tottori. Within days, official Tottori-based government sites jumped on the PR opportunity, posting photos, videos and messages on social media.

On 9 May, the governor of Tottori, Shinji Hirai, extended an official invitation for Hathaway to visit, promising that a sand dune sculpture would be made in her likeness if she were to take them up on the offer.

View this post on Instagram

Tottori prefecture’s official Instagram account reissued the governor’s invitation, and even included a cute illustration of him in the last slide.

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Local tourism boards took to Twitter to share news of Tottori’s mention by the world-famous actress.

▼ This tweet says: “Even Hollywood stars are captivated by Tottori Prefecture”.

ハリウッドスターも魅了する #鳥取県
ぜひ #とっとり旅 でステキな思い出を#鳥取観光 #鳥取旅行 #砂丘 #鳥取砂丘 #tottori https://t.co/Bnm80ZKiIj pic.twitter.com/zZh2DqlSDw

— 鳥取県観光連盟（とっとり旅【公式】） (@tottori_guide) June 9, 2026

Cities within the prefecture soon got in on the act, with the Sakaminato Tourism Association joining the chorus on 11 June.

▼ “We would be delighted if you could also visit Sakaiminato City.”

境港市にもお越しいただけると嬉しいです#境港市#アン・ハサウェイ様#鳥取 https://t.co/e4SwUEcEtu

— 境港観光協会 (@sakaiminato_net) June 11, 2026

If there was an Academy Award for Best Social Media Post, it would go to Yonago City, who went all out with its invitation, creating a clever skit inspired by The Devil Wears Prada franchise, complete with lookalike characters.

View this post on Instagram

As that skit shows, many wonders await in Tottori, and there’s even an exclusive set of manhole covers featuring Sandshrew, who, as a nod to the famous sand dunes, is the prefecture’s tourism ambassador Pokémon.

While Hathaway is yet to respond to the invitations, we have our fingers crossed that she’ll make the journey to Tottori sometime in the near future. If she needs advice on how to get there, she could always call on former U.S. late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien, who put Tottori on the map back in 2018, when he visited Conan Town to collect 3 trillion yen from the mayor.

Sources: Instagram/@tottoriawesome, Instagram/@totorealpavilion, Twitter/@tottori_guide, San-in Chuo Shimbun
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Insert images: Pakutaso, ©SoraNews24
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The report, titled “Environmental Cost of AI’s Energy Use,” examined the global carbon, land and water impacts of the infrastructure powering AI, saying that by 2030, data centres could consume 945 terawatt-hours.

That is “nearly triple the combined annual electricity use of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria, countries collectively home to more than 650 million people,” according to a UN press release.

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The government is building a new 110,00 square metre data facility in Sandy Ridge, 90 per cent of which will be dedicated to data centres, according to a government press release in March.

Daily AI use, not training

The UN report said that day-to-day use of AI models accounted for around 80 to 90 per cent of total energy demand, as opposed to just model training. It cited the case of ChatGPT, which was processing around 2.5 billion prompts per day, with image generation requiring a thousand times more energy than a simple text query.

“China’s DeepSeek, launched in January 2025, attracted more than 20 million daily active users within three weeks, and had about 125 million monthly active users by mid-2025,” the report said.

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It cites existing policies by the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD), which set rules for ensuring the energy efficiency of buildings and regulate the use of fresh water in cooling towers for air conditioning systems.

The EMSD’s Green Data Centres Practice Guide lays out initiatives for efficient data centre design, procurement, operations and disposal, whilst also promoting the use of assessment tools to measure environmental impacts.

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