Fukui

The temple in the cedars east of the city has been running since the thirteenth century and it has never stopped being a place where monks are trained. Visitors walk through a working institution: photography is restricted in some halls precisely because people are in them doing something, and the timetable of the building is not arranged around the public.

Behave as a guest in someone's house of work. Keep quiet in the corridors, follow the marked route rather than exploring, and do not photograph individuals. The reward for that is the atmosphere, which is unlike any of the temple complexes further south — dark timber, connected staircases climbing the hillside, and a smell of cedar and incense. Allow two or three hours rather than an hour, go in the cool months when the approach is at its quietest, and consider the overnight stay, which is offered and which is the version of the visit worth travelling for.

Two days. Fukui is a small prefecture with three unrelated things in it, and the honest itinerary is to pick two. The dinosaur museum in Katsuyama is a half-day and about an hour inland from Fukui City. Eiheiji, the working Zen monastery, is roughly forty minutes from the city and takes two or three hours. The Tojinbo cliffs on the coast are around an hour north-west.

Three days adds the Kumagawa post town and the Wakasa coast in the far south-west, which is closer to Kyoto than to Fukui City and is better approached from there — a fact that reshapes a lot of itineraries once noticed.

Fukui City itself is a rebuilt regional capital and not a reason to linger. The shinkansen now reaches it from Tokyo in around three hours, which has made all of the above a genuinely feasible two-day trip rather than a long detour.

The Hokuriku Shinkansen reached Fukui in March 2024, so Tokyo to Fukui Station is now a single train of roughly three hours, with stops at Awara-Onsen, Echizen-Takefu and the Tsuruga terminus. Coming from Osaka or Kyoto you ride the Thunderbird limited express to Tsuruga and change there. Komatsu Airport, over the border in Ishikawa, is the nearest. Within the prefecture, the Echizen Railway runs to Katsuyama for the dinosaur museum and Keifuku buses from Fukui Station reach Eiheiji, Ichijodani and Maruoka. Beyond those, service thins fast: the Hakusan trailhead is a two-hour drive with no public transport, and Echizen's pottery and washi villages are taxi rides from Takefu Station. Rent a car if your list goes beyond the rail-served sights.

The thin band of this prefecture along the southern bay looks toward Kyoto rather than toward the plain to the north, and it has done so for over a thousand years. Salted mackerel was carried from the port there over the passes to the capital, arriving at roughly the right point of curing, and the route is still marked and walkable in places.

Two things follow for a traveller. The temples in that southern port are older, plainer and far quieter than anything in the modern prefectural capital, because they belong to that older orbit. And the practical approach to them is from Kyoto rather than from the north — the mountains between the two halves of this prefecture make the internal journey slower than the external one. Noticing that reshapes a lot of itineraries: the south is a day from the old capital, not an add-on to the coast.

Trains and buses reach Eiheiji and Katsuyama on branch lines that work but run infrequently; the coast at Tojinbo needs a bus from Awara-Onsen and a little patience. It is possible without a car and it costs you flexibility.

A car is the better answer here more than in most of Chubu, because Fukui's attractions are scattered on different radii from the city with no useful connections between them — going from the monastery to the cliffs by public transport means returning to Fukui first. With a car the two-day itinerary becomes comfortable. In winter, note that this is Sea of Japan snow country and the inland roads toward Katsuyama take it seriously.

December to February for the inland half: heavy snow, short days, and a museum-and-monastery itinerary that is doable but joyless in a hire car on unfamiliar roads. The coast stays open and the winter crab season is the single best reason to come to Fukui at all, so this is a season to invert rather than avoid.

Late summer is the weak spot. It is humid, the coast is busy with domestic holidaymakers, and neither of the inland attractions gains anything from the weather. Spring and autumn are straightforwardly better, and the monastery in particular is at its best in the cool months when the cedar-lined approach is quiet.

Winter is the point for some travellers and the obstacle for others. Fukui City is one of Japan's snowiest prefectural capitals; January and February highs sit around 5–6°C and snow closes mountain roads. Echizen crab season runs early November to late March, and ryokan rates in Awara and Mikuni climb with it. The Hakusan trails are under snow from November to June, so climbing is July to October. The Sotomo cave cruises off Obama run April to November and stop in winter when the bay gets too rough. August is hot and humid, in the low 30s°C. Late April to May and October are the easy months.

Echizen crab is landed at Mikuni and Echizen Town from November to March and tagged at the port; a full kaiseki runs well into five figures, so many people eat it once and plan the rest of the trip around it. Sauce katsudon — pork cutlet dipped in Worcestershire-style sauce, no egg — was invented in Fukui City and the original shop still serves it near the station. Oroshi soba comes cold under grated daikon. In Obama, Wakasa mackerel is still cured the way it was for the road to Kyoto.

A first visit should pair Eiheiji with the dinosaur museum, which sounds like a joke itinerary and is not. The monastery is an active training temple where the halls are connected by covered walkways through cedar and the monks are visibly working rather than performing; the museum is one of the largest of its kind anywhere, sitting in a valley that has produced most of Japan's dinosaur finds. The contrast is the trip.

Come back in winter for the crab, and go to the Wakasa coast in the south-west while you are at it. Echizen crab is a genuinely seasonal, genuinely local thing rather than a marketing exercise, and eating it in a small coastal inn in January is what people from Kansai come to this prefecture for. Approach that corner from Kyoto rather than from Fukui City.