It was me, my guide for the trip, Mamoru-san, and a 20ft-tall effigy of a character from a classical kabuki play. An odd trio by any standards; even more unusual, we were utterly alone at this 600-year-old Shinto shrine. The breeze tickled the zigzag paper streamers strung on the torii gate in front of us. Behind, the Nine-Headed Dragon River surged towards the sea. Above my head, the giant puppet’s alabaster face and minacious eyebrows glared fiercely.
Like so many other destinations, Japan is grappling with overtourism, and in a more popular part of the country we’d have been clamouring for space. But today few western tourists visit Mikuni, once an important port town in Fukui prefecture, 200 miles west of Tokyo. This despite the raucous 300-year-old spring Mikuni Festival, for which residents make enormous puppets of samurai, ninjas, warlords (and my kabuki friend) to wheel around the streets in procession as entertainment for the gods of the shrine. I was there to escape the crowds and see the real Japan. So far, so good.
On the main Japanese island of Honshu, Fukui is a coastal prefecture on the Sea of Japan that curls down towards Kyoto. This is old country, one of the nation’s most traditional and least-known places — even the Japanese can struggle to point it out on a map. In surveys, though, it consistently rates as the happiest place in the country. It has so much going for it: extraordinary coastline, spectacular mountains, ancient temples and shrines, hot springs, monster snow crabs (you eat them, not the other way round).
The Hokuriku extenstion runs between Kanazawa and Tsuruga
PROVIDED BY EAST JAPAN RAILWAY COMPANY
Until March getting to Fukui was a slog, but a new shinkansen extension has cut the journey from Tokyo from three and a half hours with a change to less than three hours direct. The new line, called the Hokuriku extension, runs between Kanazawa in Ishikawa prefecture, north of Mikuni, and Tsuruga in the south of Fukui; the former is your first stop from the capital.
Affectionately known as Little Kyoto, Kanazawa was one of the largest castle towns in feudal Japan and was not bombed during the Second World War, so its 430 years of historical architecture remains intact. In one day you can zip from the atmospheric former samurai district, with its narrow lanes and marigold-coloured earthen walls, to the lanterns and dark-wood latticed houses of the city’s three geisha districts, popping into a few of the 150 temples and squeezing in oysters and sashimi at the sprawling Omicho fish market.
The spectacular entrance to Kanazawa station
ALAMY
• 17 of the best hotels in Tokyo
With two days you can add in Kenrokuen, one of the country’s three most famous gardens, with plum and cherry groves, ornamental ponds, waterfalls and vast pine trees, the branches of which spread wide across slender waterways. The castle next door will look good in your photos, though the main building is a 20-year-old replica of the feudal-era original.
Alessia at Kenrokuen Garden
Also like Kyoto, Kanazawa has surviving machiya, 19th-century wooden townhouses, some of which you can stay in. Mine had tatami rooms and a remote-controlled hot tub and was a minute’s stroll from a small bridge over the Asano River, where I witnessed the astonishing sight of a large flock of milky egrets roosting in a tree over the water (one night’s self-catering for two from £219; kanazawa-machiya-inn.com).
• Read our Japan travel guide
It’s 40 minutes by train from Kanazawa to Awara Onsen in Fukui. Domestic tourists come here for the hot springs and grand spa hotels, such as the Haiya (half-board doubles from £178; haiya.jp). But you can also rent a car (from £42; en.tabirai.net) and speed off to Maruoka Castle, one of the oldest of the 12 surviving samurai castles, completed in 1576. Only the watchtower remains — three storeys high with two dragons crowning its rare stone gabled roof. It was a 67-degree scramble up the staircases inside, but worth it for the view from the top. The surrounding village, paddy fields and 400-odd cherry trees backed by mountains would probably still be recognisable to the 16th-century samurai general who built it (£2; maruoka-castle.jp).
I also wanted to see the extraordinary cliffs at Tojinbo, a 30-minute drive from Maruoka. Here, huge basalt columns thrust up from the Sea of Japan and you can try the Echizen snow crab, considered such a delicacy that they can sell for up to £160 each. Like any good seaside spot, it also has some fantastically tacky shopping opportunities. Instead of candy floss, though, the stalls that line the route to the cliffs tout dried king prawns flattened into thick pink crisps, and instead of seagulls, here it’s hawks that vie to steal your snacks. Ice cream was safer — my black-sesame-flavoured soft serve was similar in colour to the rocks, which stretch for almost a mile and are piled vertically like lead pencils, their bases sliced by deep inlets and their tops fuzzed with grasses harbouring chirping cicadas. This is one of the few places in the world that you’ll find this type of rock formation. Perhaps the Dutch engineer George Arnold Escher didn’t realise this when in the 1870s he gave several columns a trim, using the rocks to form the harbour at nearby Mikuni, where later that day I had my encounter with the kabuki effigy.
I found some more Tojinbo rock the following day at Yokokan Garden in Fukui City, the prefectural capital and my next stop on the shinkansen. Mamoru-san and I cycled to this pleasure spot, where the feudal lord who built it in the 17th century hosted full-moon parties. With its grassy hillocks, stepping stones, maples and traditional villa floating above a wide pond, the garden has the ability to transport you back in time. When I visited mid-morning it was just me and the koi carp, and it was glorious (£1; fukuisan.jp).
Fukui City is the gateway to Eiheiji, a mountain village where in 1244 Zen Master Dogen founded Soto Zen, now the largest Zen Buddhist sect in Japan. Over the centuries seven temple buildings sprouted between the oaks, maples, japonica and acers, their broad-tiled roofs curved towards the sky. Today the complex is the epicentre of the sect, training 150 monks and receiving half a million visitors each year. But there’s little sense of that outside as birds chatter from the gables of a pagoda and water in a stream slooshes over pebbles. Only the 700-year-old pines standing in rows — their cragged feet calloused and covered with moss, branches reaching to graze the bellies of the clouds — hint at the time that has passed.
The Tojinbo cliffs in Fukui
GETTY IMAGES
I stayed two minutes’ walk down the hill at Hakujuken, a smart inn with open-air baths and a vegan chef who trained at the temple (half-board doubles from £275; hakujukan-eiheiji.jp). In the afternoon I sat with a group of other guests in the half-lotus position at the temple’s meditation hall, while a monk introduced us to the art of zazen meditation. I learnt to hold my hands left over right with thumbs tucked in and empty my mind, and that if I felt sleepy I should lean forward to signal to the monk, who would whack me on the shoulder with a stick to “encourage me” to wake up. I was wide-eyed, but each resounding whack administered to someone else sent a jolt through the group; it really did keep your mind in the room.
• 14 of the best places to visit in Japan
I spent my final day in search of ancient crafts, and Echizen-Takefu, eight minutes down the line from Fukui, is the station to do it from. You’ll find makers of ancient pottery, traditional lacquerware, and intricate cabinetry, but knives and paper are the best-known exports. As part of a tour of an antique papermaking studio at the Echizen Washi Village I pulverised steamed mulberry with a wooden bat and dipped bamboo mats into rectangular vats filled with water and shredded bark. Once it dried the resulting paper was pleasingly thick and textured, like a fine-art print in waiting. One of the artisans told me that it was a goddess who showed villagers 1,500 years ago how create the paper for banknotes, doors in feudal villas and birth announcements for emperors (entry £2, workshop £56; echizenwashi.jp).
It was only 700 years ago that the samurai swordmaker Chiyozuru Kuniyasu left Kyoto to make blades that caused less bloodshed. He settled on forging sickles in Echizen, and in the workshops at Takefu Knife Village a collective of master blacksmiths still use his techniques. They allow their apprentices to teach amateurs like me to sharpen knives on traditional whetstones, or even make Santoku kitchen knives from scratch. The blades produced here are some of the best in the world and are sold in the neat little museum — a pair of chrome-plated triangular buildings like knife tips peeking between the paddy fields. They are sought out by the world’s top chefs, including Rene Redzepi, but not on the day I visited; I was the sole tourist there — same old (workshops from £67; takefu-knifevillage.jp).
Hakujuken is a stylish place to stay when in Eiheiji
HAKUJUKAN
Back at the station Mamoru-san and I were waiting for the shinkansen back to Tokyo when a woman rushed up with some souvenirs I’d left in the bathroom. “How did she know they were mine?” I asked my guide. “Easy,” he said. “She saw they were from a tourist place and you’re the only westerner in the station.” Only in Fukui, I thought.
Alessia Horwich was a guest of Japan Tourism (japan.travel) and InsideJapan, which has 14 nights on the self-guided Hidden Zen tour from £6,030pp, including transfers, most breakfasts and some extra meals (insidejapantours.com). Fly to Tokyo
Have you visited Fukui? Share your experience in the comments
Become a subscriber and, along with unlimited digital access to The Times and The Sunday Times, you can enjoy a collection of travel offers and competitions curated by our trusted travel partners, especially for Times+ members
Sign up for our Times Travel newsletter and follow us on Instagram and X
AloJapan.com