Fukui Hidden Gems

Fukui is two places that happen to share a prefectural office. North of the mountains is Reihoku — Fukui City, the Echizen coast, and the snow country behind it. South is Reinan, a thin strip along Wakasa Bay that has always looked toward Kyoto rather than the Hokuriku plain: the Saba Kaido, the mackerel road, carried salted fish from Obama over the passes to the capital, and the temples in Obama are older and quieter than anything in Fukui City. The prefecture's industries are unusually specific and you will run into them. Sabae makes the large majority of Japan's domestic eyeglass frames, and has a museum where you can assemble a pair. Katsuyama sits on the Kitadani fossil beds, which have produced most of the dinosaur material ever found in Japan, and the museum built on top of them is the reason many families come at all. Eiheiji, founded in 1244, is not a ruin but a working monastery where photography is restricted in some halls because monks are training in them.