is a brackish lake located between Tottori

Tottori Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region. The capital is the city of Tottori. It is the least populous prefecture in Japan.- History :Before the Meiji Restoration, Tottori encompassed the old provinces of Hōki and Inaba...

 and Shimane

Shimane Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region on Honshū island. The capital is Matsue. It is the second least populous prefecture in Japan, after its eastern neighbor Tottori. The prefecture has an area elongated from east to west facing the Chūgoku Mountain Range on the south side and to...

 prefectures in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. The lake is enclosed by the Shimane Peninsula to the north and Yumigahama Peninsula to the east. It is the fifth largest lake in surface area in Japan.

Nakaumi connects Lake Shinji

Lake Shinji

is a lake in the northeast area of the Shimane Prefecture in Japan. The lake is the seventh largest in Japan, with a circumference of 48 km. It is enclosed by the Shimane peninsula to the north, and the Izumo and Matsue plains to the west and east respectively...

 (宍道湖 Shinji-ko) and the Sea of Japan

Sea of Japan

The Sea of Japan is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean, between the Asian mainland, the Japanese archipelago and Sakhalin. It is bordered by Japan, North Korea, Russia and South Korea. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it has almost no tides due to its nearly complete enclosure from the Pacific...

, and is surrounded by the municipalities Matsue, Yasugi, Yonago and Sakaiminato.

There are two large islands in the lake, Daikon Island

Daikon Island

is an island made of basalt and is in Nakaumi that is the brackish lake located between Tottori and Shimane prefectures in Japan. It is currently part of Matsue, Shimane prefecture, Japan. Daikon-island is also a small volcano called Daikon-island volcano. Its old Japanese name was "Tako-shima" ...

 (大根島 Daikonjima, lit. "radish

Radish

The radish is an edible root vegetable of the Brassicaceae family that was domesticated in Europe, in pre-Roman times. They are grown and consumed throughout the world. Radishes have numerous varieties, varying in size, color and duration of required cultivation time...

 island") and Eshima Island (江島 Eshima, "river island"). There are bridges and roads that connect the east and west shores of the lake through the two islands.

Nakaumi is a brackish lake because it is connected to the Sea of Japan by a short channel, the Sakai Channel, and lies so low that the tides reverse the flow of the rivers all the way into Lake Shinji.

Nakaumi (中海) literally means "middle sea". Even though Nakaumi is a lake, it was likely named a sea because of its saline water and proximity to the actual sea. In Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, the lake is usually referred to simply as Nakaumi, not as Nakaumi-ko (Lake Nakaumi).