blog for people from abroad about Fukui Prefecture in Japan.
October/15/2022
The Tojinbo Cliffs (東尋坊) are a series of cliffs in Sakai, Fukui that are about a kilometer long and about 25 meters high. The cliffs are made from columnar jointing of pyroxene andesite. (Pyroxene andesite is a type of rock, and a columnar joint is a column-shaped crack in stone.) The columnar joints in the Tojinbo Cliffs are among the largest in the world. The only places that have similarly large ones are Mount Kumgang in Korea and the western coast of Norway.
September/17/2022
Kehi no Matsubara(気比の松原), which is a designated National Place of Scenic Beauty, is a pine tree park with a beach. It’s a well-known sightseeing spot in Tsuruga, Fukui. In the past, a lot of important historical figures have been there.
It faces Tsuruga Bay, is about 1.5 kilometers long and has an area of about 400,000 square meters. There are about 17,000 pine trees in the park. The contrast between the white sandy beach and the green pine trees is beautiful. (Matsubara means pine fields.)
April/9/2022
It takes about 40 minutes to get from Fukui Station to Nishiyama Park on the train. You can enjoy seeing the cherry blossoms and azaleas in spring, and the maple trees in autumn there. The park has a long history and has been designated one of Japan’s top 100 historical parks. It’s a major tourist destination in Fukui.
March/31/2021
Maruoka Castle(丸岡城, Maruoka-jō) is one of the best-known sightseeing spots in Fukui. Every year about 120,000 people go there. The castle tower there is one of only 12 remaining in Japan, and it’s so precious that it’s been designated as an important cultural property.
(The 12 towers referred to here are ones that were built in the Edo period (1603–1868) or earlier and that still exist. There are a lot of other castle towers in Japan, but they’re mostly restored ones.)
March/27/2021
Fukui Castle was built in 1606 by Yuki Hideyasu, who was the lord of the Echizen Fukui domain. Until 1871 the castle was used mostly by the Echizen Matsudaira family, who were the lords of that same domain. Sadly the castle tower was destroyed by fire in 1669.
You might be surprised to find out that the Fukui prefectural government building, the prefectural police headquarters, and the prefectural assembly hall are all within the site of the Fukui Castle Ruins.
December/6/2020
There’s a ginkgo tree in Fukui that, along with the phoenix, is known as a symbol of the city.
The ginkgo has green leaves in spring and summer. Its leaves change from green to yellow in autumn, and it has no leaves in winter.(If you want to know more about the ginkgo, please read my previous post: Hirase Sakugoro: a unique researcher who overturned common conceptions of plants)
August/1/2020
The Asuwa River (足羽川), which is about 60 kilometers long, is located in Fukui Prefecture, Japan. Mt. Kanmuri (in Ikeda-cho in the prefecture) is the source of the river, which runs through the central part of Fukui.
In my opinion there are three good points about the Asuwa River:
1. Along it there are about 600 cherry blossom trees.
November/9/2019
September/21/2019
People sometimes call Fukui Prefecture “the Dinosaur Kingdom” because it has the largest site in Japan for the excavation of dinosaur fossils. The Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum is in the city of Katsuyama, and I went there today
September/28/2019
What does the word dinosaur remind you of? For me, it reminds me of the movie Jurassic Park, which I watched at a theater with my father and brother.
Dinosaurs lived from about 230 to 66 million years ago. They dominated the Earth for 160 million years. It’s largely believed that most of them became extinct because of a meteor impact. A lot of researchers think that dinosaurs evolved into birds.