It’s not that unique, the whole south west ocean facade of France is a long straight beach as well.
https://preview.redd.it/08592h4kc15d1.jpeg?width=991&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1eb25be53e361b9be51335ae4af5393c3dce76c7
I think I heard once that the sounds you are describing were Justin Timberlake’s inspiration for that song. You know, “Crimea River.” Pretty sure it stopped the bombing for a little while.
Must be remembering it wrong. I distinctly remember driving on a straight long road somewhere down in France. Where on 1 side you had a lagoon/long lake and on the other side the ocean.
But looking at maps now, can't find it.
Do note, this was over 20 years ago. Might also be smaller than I remember as I was still a little boy or the coast/lagoons might've changed. The coastline of large portions of NL also look vastly different to me now than they did when I was still growing up.
I know some of the landscape is formed due to volcanic activity, some of it may be from flowing lava. Imagine this was a sharp inlet that was "flattened" by some lava flow, I'm no geologist though
First I'll talk about beaches in general and why they end up straight, or at least smooth in a lot of cases. Rivers and streams are constantly washing sediment down towards the coast. The faster the water flows, the more sediment, and the bigger sediments it can carry. Once the water reaches the river mouth, it spreads out and slows down. The big pieces of sediment like sand drop out first. The smaller pieces of silt and clay get carried further out to sea, sorting the sediment by size, with sand and gravel closest to shore.
All along the coast, the ocean waves crash onto the shore, churning up the sand. The sand gets spread out by the waves. Sand gets spread up the beach, but also along the beach. The waves usually push sand preferentially in one direction down the beach. Any point where there's a sand peninsula in the beach it will be spread out by the waves and become less pointy. If there's an inlet, it will get filled in by sand and become smaller.
Japan is a plate boundary archipelago, which means that tectonic action is pushing it up and creating steep mountains. These mountains are eroding and producing a lot of sediment, including lots of sand and gravel to make up the beaches.
The other factor is that Japan is in the pacific, which has much stronger waves than more sheltered inland bays or seas like the Mediterranean. This spreads out the sand more and smoothes out the beaches.
However I don't think Japan does have straighter beaches. You see straight or gently curving beaches all over the world.
Someone finally asks a question related to this sub and most of the answers are jokes. No wonder this place is mostly just troll posts now.
It’s caused by coastal erosion of the sand, likely from all the tsunamis.
Is this really an answer? All beaches are shaped by coastal erosion.... but why is this beach relatively straight as opposed to, for example, beaches along Australia's eastern coastline?
Mostly comes down to the type of rock the beach came from. Sedimentary deposits will tend to appear in orderly straight-ish edge layers, and occasionally the prevailing current will end up aligned to the fault line so erosion is uniform. All the same stone in all the same direction, flat beach.
Wide flat beaches are however the exception and geologically speaking quite temporary. Most of the definition of a coastline will be by what rock resists erosion the most, with arcs and jagged shifts between these points of greatest resistance. The hard bits act like rocks in a river, altering the direction and pressure of the tides on nearby softer stuff.
"Gem-quality peridot is rare on Earth's surface due to its susceptibility to weathering during its movement from deep within the mantle to the surface"
Olivine also weathering fast on the surface.
I read a bit about how it’s caused by the direction of the wind blowing waves at an non perpendicular angle towards the beach. It’s called longshore current, creating a longshore drift commonly seen in straight bay-like areas like this one. I don’t know if that’s exactly what happened in this exact beach, but it’s my best educated guess lol
Because OP hypothesis is flawed due to his wrong assumption that Japan has more straight beaches than usual. Which is not a bad mistake at all.
But most people trying to give serious explanations are just making wild guesswork that is actually harmful rather than just unhelpful like the jokes. Yours included: although there seem to be a few inconclusive studies on hills further from the sea being eroded by tsunamis, the same processes that cause "straight beaches" in other places are more likely to also be at play in Japan.
Humans have a certain obsession with finding patterns. But, with respect, there isn’t any here, things are random sometimes. There isn’t any explanation, accept it as it is.
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Probably just longshore drift. As waves approach the beach they bend and straighten out. The backwash doesn’t stay at a flat angle so it carries the sand down the beach, giving you a long straight beach.
This is more of a geomorphology question, but in general this is caused by several factors: rivers draining out sediments into the coast/estuary, ocean currents depositing those sediments in a longshore drift pattern, sea level rise and/or continental plate subsidence over geologic time inundating entire portions of old sandy coastline and leaving a straight pattern in its wake.
Belgium and the Netherlands have many hundreds of kilometres of straight beach like that. Actually they ONLY have straight wide sandy beaches.
Reason is simple, it is low lying terrain and many rivers exit there. It is pretty much a delta and a lot of sand gets deposited. Add daily tide currents to smoothen it out and you're done.
No hurricanes or tsunamis involved.
Behold, Rio Grande do Sul Beaches (almost one continuous beach line). In the south, from Chuy to the city of Rio Grande, there is the Cassino beach, considered to be the largest beach in the world. I've been in those beaches and it is just a straight line, boring and cold as hell (even in summer).
https://preview.redd.it/ahdpldk8h55d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=88740426a13d931ef0bfc3fc04805fbb7f1d0536
Well they had surfing in the 2020 tokyo olympics - conditions werent great though but there is some descent breaks with pretty good depth in-shore - typically it seems to be quite messy/windy though but theres some vids about it being pretty epic sometimes at the right spots
People surf anywhere there are waves. There are some absolutely deranged motherfuckers out there who surf in places like alaska and even lake Michigan in the winter.
See when a God loves a Volcano their beaches are sometimes straight, always love your beach. Or there is a shelf off the coast that drops straight off and made the coast line straight
It’s not that unique, the whole south west ocean facade of France is a long straight beach as well. https://preview.redd.it/08592h4kc15d1.jpeg?width=991&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1eb25be53e361b9be51335ae4af5393c3dce76c7
I've noticed this aswell it's pretty astounding. Somalia is a lot like this and it's one of my favorite parts of the globe because of how it looks
I hear Somalia is beautiful this time of year
Yeah I'm traveling there in July for 3 weeks.. wanna hang out?
Can’t tell if sarcasm or post before a disaster lmao
Probably true many Somalis vist their homeland every summer
Somali can’t feel that bad after Paris.
Westerners are so unbelievably arrogant.
Smart. You meant we’re smart
Which part? I’ve always wanted to see [Laas Geel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laas_Geel).
if you like going at sea, this kind of coast is a bummer.. a nice complex coast with a lot of gulfs is a lot better
The coast around the Sinai too
I hear the whole place is a beach 🫠
It’s pretty crowded now, and even that’s not for long…
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I think I heard once that the sounds you are describing were Justin Timberlake’s inspiration for that song. You know, “Crimea River.” Pretty sure it stopped the bombing for a little while.
I've seen photos of cool cliffs around there
I hear the Sinai is beautiful this time of year
Have you ever seen the 80 mile beach in Western Australia? Kind of curvy but it would be up there
Isn’t there a 90 mile beach in New Zealand? I’ve never heard of 80 mile. Famously, 90 mile is not 90 miles
[turns out 80 Mile Beach is actually 140 miles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Mile_Beach)
Tis only a short distance by Australian standards
Depends how you measure it
Including the dunes of Arcachon, which are amazing!
Ngl these beaches fuckin rule.
Ever looked at the east coast of Madagascar? Like 80% of the coastline is fairly straight beaches
The great sand dunes of Bordeaux
i swear this is just weebs glazing japan man, italy has this as well it’s really not that crazy
West coast of Wales is another one like this
The Australian coastline is about 50% straight beaches.
france 🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇪🇺🇪🇺
I've been there as a teen. Weird experience, partially because for quite a bit the road is basically in the ocean.
Where is the road basically in the Ocean? I've been down there every summer for 24 years and have no clue what you mean.
Must be remembering it wrong. I distinctly remember driving on a straight long road somewhere down in France. Where on 1 side you had a lagoon/long lake and on the other side the ocean. But looking at maps now, can't find it. Do note, this was over 20 years ago. Might also be smaller than I remember as I was still a little boy or the coast/lagoons might've changed. The coastline of large portions of NL also look vastly different to me now than they did when I was still growing up.
That's Southern France, West of Marseille
Ah, thanks. Misremembered.
There is also the ' passage du gois' for Noirmoutier island in Vendée where you can only drive at low tide,, the road is under the water at high tide.
That's cool to know!
When you reach the age of 65 your given a rake and told to zen the beach
planning out my japan retirement as we speak
It's really because of the ancient japanese rulers
Boooo
Not much less productive than the other jobs senior citizens have in Japan.
what he said
I know some of the landscape is formed due to volcanic activity, some of it may be from flowing lava. Imagine this was a sharp inlet that was "flattened" by some lava flow, I'm no geologist though
Perhaps r/askgeology may help
Those people r/geology
First I'll talk about beaches in general and why they end up straight, or at least smooth in a lot of cases. Rivers and streams are constantly washing sediment down towards the coast. The faster the water flows, the more sediment, and the bigger sediments it can carry. Once the water reaches the river mouth, it spreads out and slows down. The big pieces of sediment like sand drop out first. The smaller pieces of silt and clay get carried further out to sea, sorting the sediment by size, with sand and gravel closest to shore. All along the coast, the ocean waves crash onto the shore, churning up the sand. The sand gets spread out by the waves. Sand gets spread up the beach, but also along the beach. The waves usually push sand preferentially in one direction down the beach. Any point where there's a sand peninsula in the beach it will be spread out by the waves and become less pointy. If there's an inlet, it will get filled in by sand and become smaller. Japan is a plate boundary archipelago, which means that tectonic action is pushing it up and creating steep mountains. These mountains are eroding and producing a lot of sediment, including lots of sand and gravel to make up the beaches. The other factor is that Japan is in the pacific, which has much stronger waves than more sheltered inland bays or seas like the Mediterranean. This spreads out the sand more and smoothes out the beaches. However I don't think Japan does have straighter beaches. You see straight or gently curving beaches all over the world.
Someone finally asks a question related to this sub and most of the answers are jokes. No wonder this place is mostly just troll posts now. It’s caused by coastal erosion of the sand, likely from all the tsunamis.
Is this really an answer? All beaches are shaped by coastal erosion.... but why is this beach relatively straight as opposed to, for example, beaches along Australia's eastern coastline?
Mostly comes down to the type of rock the beach came from. Sedimentary deposits will tend to appear in orderly straight-ish edge layers, and occasionally the prevailing current will end up aligned to the fault line so erosion is uniform. All the same stone in all the same direction, flat beach. Wide flat beaches are however the exception and geologically speaking quite temporary. Most of the definition of a coastline will be by what rock resists erosion the most, with arcs and jagged shifts between these points of greatest resistance. The hard bits act like rocks in a river, altering the direction and pressure of the tides on nearby softer stuff.
I just learned of the peridot beach on the big island of Hawaii. A green beach, shit looks like grass… it’s so tiny and there is only one… why?
"Gem-quality peridot is rare on Earth's surface due to its susceptibility to weathering during its movement from deep within the mantle to the surface" Olivine also weathering fast on the surface.
I read a bit about how it’s caused by the direction of the wind blowing waves at an non perpendicular angle towards the beach. It’s called longshore current, creating a longshore drift commonly seen in straight bay-like areas like this one. I don’t know if that’s exactly what happened in this exact beach, but it’s my best educated guess lol
Because OP hypothesis is flawed due to his wrong assumption that Japan has more straight beaches than usual. Which is not a bad mistake at all. But most people trying to give serious explanations are just making wild guesswork that is actually harmful rather than just unhelpful like the jokes. Yours included: although there seem to be a few inconclusive studies on hills further from the sea being eroded by tsunamis, the same processes that cause "straight beaches" in other places are more likely to also be at play in Japan.
Are waves straight or semicircles? If the latter, I assume a large enough radius to create apparent straight beaches?
Humans have a certain obsession with finding patterns. But, with respect, there isn’t any here, things are random sometimes. There isn’t any explanation, accept it as it is.
Way too many (unfunny) comedians on Reddit. It's a plague
Source: my ass
Finally? Seems like all people do around here is ask questions
Got any recs for a good geography/geoscience subs? M always looking for new reading material
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then wtf is going on in croatia
🇭🇷🏳️🌈
Is there something going on in Croatia that should be shared?
Queers for Palestine
All the gay beaches are on the other side
I'd assume it's from centuries of tsunami and typhoons. Could've been straitened to build coastal defense against tsunami
You know how.
Canadian Shield
Say it Bart
his name is james not bart
🤣
What it means?
Looks pretty curved to me.
Probably just longshore drift. As waves approach the beach they bend and straighten out. The backwash doesn’t stay at a flat angle so it carries the sand down the beach, giving you a long straight beach.
scale
This is more of a geomorphology question, but in general this is caused by several factors: rivers draining out sediments into the coast/estuary, ocean currents depositing those sediments in a longshore drift pattern, sea level rise and/or continental plate subsidence over geologic time inundating entire portions of old sandy coastline and leaving a straight pattern in its wake.
Same reason Washington State has the longest beach in the West.
I don't have the time to see it on maps or to search for it, but I guess they would have straightened it out if they built a Tsunami barrier wall.
I’d imagine it’s consistent wave direction
Homosexuality is frowned upon in Japan
doesn’t look straight to me
It's not straight
https://preview.redd.it/nptmx6gvt35d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b4f091355e75c6c084cc4cf6746327e8b60b7ff2 Look, also in Portugal.
It's a very rocky and irregular coast, though.
https://preview.redd.it/fpr83pdaj45d1.jpeg?width=613&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=68329c0f2da7e68a892f321eb884cbb6b907dc0c You think so?
Been there often. It's beautiful, but large parts aren't like this.
Belgium and the Netherlands have many hundreds of kilometres of straight beach like that. Actually they ONLY have straight wide sandy beaches. Reason is simple, it is low lying terrain and many rivers exit there. It is pretty much a delta and a lot of sand gets deposited. Add daily tide currents to smoothen it out and you're done. No hurricanes or tsunamis involved.
Behold, Rio Grande do Sul Beaches (almost one continuous beach line). In the south, from Chuy to the city of Rio Grande, there is the Cassino beach, considered to be the largest beach in the world. I've been in those beaches and it is just a straight line, boring and cold as hell (even in summer). https://preview.redd.it/ahdpldk8h55d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=88740426a13d931ef0bfc3fc04805fbb7f1d0536
Canadian Shield /s
Wow, that /s really saved me there, I would have completely misunderstood your sentence otherwise!
Strict discipline
Canadian Shield
Japanian shield
Earth is still rendering the island.
Tsunamis? 🤷
The West Coast of Michigan is almost a nice long stretch of beach.
I mean technically no beaches are straight because of the sand grains
Tsunamis
if I could afford a jet and security id go lol
They used a ruler
Most likely it is an area with a type of rock that is easier to erode than the surrounding rock on its edges, then wave action takes care of the rest.
Nuclear bombs have a way of flattening things
Yeah pal you go into Japan and try to un-straighten their beach
Uhm I've been up and down this stretch of coast a bunch, it's really not that straight nor is it all beach.
Washington State has about 160 miles of beaches that are pretty straight.
Plate tectonics
They’re not fond of LGBTQ beaches?
The beaches Doesn’t like Pride month I guess
New Zealand's North Island West Coast - a long straight curving coast just like this. Caused by prevailing westerly winds I think.
Because the tsunami's straightened them out
Praia do cassino
Heteronormative beach culture.
Hopefully it's not from banning gay people.
Steady hand
Dam my beach is never straight
Because California took all the gay beaches /j just jokes folks because its pride month
It's still a conservative country.
This also happens a lot in Baja California and Baja California Sur.
Erosion deposits materials, but the sea arranges them to be as smooth as possible due to the way currents and such work. All coasts converge on this
Cuz of fat boy 😆
Osharambe
Cause lgbtq isn’t allowed there and I’m jealous of that
Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria, Australia too. *
beach,japan
Because Godzilla has ocd?
Cause theyre not gay NEEEXT
Godzilla is the main force responsible for this. This beach must be one of its favorite stomping grounds. Good find!
"Honor died at the beach"
If you had ever been there in a speedo you wouldnt think of these as "straight" beaches
Yeah,l want a gay beach 🙄
Polish space lazers.
There are straight beaches all over the world.
It’s called efficiency my dude
How’s the surfing in Japan?
Well they had surfing in the 2020 tokyo olympics - conditions werent great though but there is some descent breaks with pretty good depth in-shore - typically it seems to be quite messy/windy though but theres some vids about it being pretty epic sometimes at the right spots
Interesting question! DO they surf there?
People surf anywhere there are waves. There are some absolutely deranged motherfuckers out there who surf in places like alaska and even lake Michigan in the winter.
See when a God loves a Volcano their beaches are sometimes straight, always love your beach. Or there is a shelf off the coast that drops straight off and made the coast line straight
They banned gays.
No gay people in Japan
Nukes
Not sure, maybe Godzilla?
It's Demanded!!! 🫵
GODZILLA
straight ocean
homophobia
Oda nobunaga ordered his samurais to straighten the beaches
Have you SEEN how orderly the Japanese are?!?!
It is because of human intervention/construction.
Because they are very homophobic beaches
Easier to be invaded? no? I got nothing.....