March/16/2024
JR Fukui Station is a gateway to Fukui Prefecture.
JR Fukui Station changed on March 16, 2024: The Shinkansen (bullet train) line between Kanazawa, a city in Ishikawa, and Tsuruga, a city in Fukui, has opened. Because of this, you can now go from Tokyo to Fukui on the bullet train in less than three hours.
Since it’s now easy to go from Tokyo to Fukui, Fukui is getting a lot of attention in Japan. The Washington Post, which is a well-known American newspaper, included Fukui Prefecture as the only destination in Japan in a feature article about 12 places around the world to go to in 2024 to avoid crowds. Fukui wasn’t well known before, but now it’s attracting attention all over the world.
There are a lot of dinosaur monuments in and around JR Fukui Station. This is because Fukui is known as a “dinosaur kingdom.” About 80% of dinosaur fossils discovered in Japan have been found in Fukui Prefecture. Also, one of the world’s top three dinosaur museums is in Fukui—the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. (If you want to learn more about the museum, please see my previous entry.)
There’s a tourist information center near the east exit of JR Fukui Station. It’s open from 8:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. There are some staff there, and you can ask questions about sightseeing in Fukui Prefecture in English. There’s also an automatic currency exchange machine that handles 12 currencies, including the US dollar, the euro, the British pound, and the Chinese yuan. You can use it to exchange foreign banknotes for Japanese yen, and it operates in 10 languages.
There are gift shops and restaurants in Fukui Station. You can buy Fukui specialties like habutae mochi, satsukigase senbei, and Echizen uni at the gift shops. At the restaurants, you can have well-known Fukui dishes like sauce katsudon and Echizen soba.
Enjoy exploring Fukui Station!