March/7/2021
Happiring is a medium-sized shopping complex next to JR Fukui Station in the city of Fukui. Inside Happiring, there’s Fukui City Tourist Information Center, a convenience store, gift shops, restaurants, and a science museum.
At Fukui City Tourist Information Center, you can get tourist information about Fukui in English from 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Happiring is a word coined from a combination of happy and ring. It represents the meaning and hopes for a ring of happiness to spread far and wide from the building .
There’s a space with a roof in Happiring called Happi Terrace. At the terrace, there are sometimes events like a music concert, a food event, and a talk event.
The motif on the roof of the terrace is made from the feathers of a phoenix. The phoenix is a symbol of Fukui. If you want to know more about this, please read my previous account(The ginkgo tree in Fukui Shrine: The symbol of Fukui).
There’s a science museum on the 5th floor, but the information panels are written only in Japanese.
I went to Happiring to check out what kinds of food and goods are sold there. You can buy Fukui specialties like Habutae mochi, Echizen soba, mizu yokan (red bean jelly), and goma dofu (sesame tofu) at gift shops on the 1st floor and the 2nd floor.
On the 2nd floor, you can buy traditional Fukui crafts, like Echizen pottery, Echizen paper, Echizen lacquerware, Wakasa lacquerware, Wakasa agate-works, Echizen knives, and Echizen chests. I saw some beautiful dishes, chopsticks, ornaments, cups, letter writing sets, and so on.
There’s a restaurant named Fukubuku Chaya (福福茶屋 in Japanese) on the 2nd floor, where you can eat Fukui specialties, like sauce katsudon, Echizen soba, Echizen gani (crab), goma dofu (sesame tofu), deep fried tofu, and saba no heshiko (a traditional preserved food of fish pickled in miso or local sake). It’s rare to find such a lot of Fukui specialties at one restaurant. I recommend it.
In Happiring, there’s a Tourist Information Center, gift shops, and restaurants where you can buy and eat Fukui specialties. It’s very convenient, so if you come to Fukui, why don’t you go there?