Fukui Prefecture is not where most girls' trips are planned, and that is a missed opportunity of considerable scale. A prefecture that produces 95% of Japan’s eyeglass frames, runs some of the country’s most elegant ryokan, offers hands-on craft workshops in one of Japan’s most historic paper-making towns, and delivers dramatic coastal scenery for exactly the kind of photographs that actually do the experience justice — this is a destination worth building an itinerary around. Four to five days in Fukui with a group of friends moves between shopping, soaking, making things, eating well, and spending time in places that feel genuinely discovered rather than thoroughly recommended.
Sabae: Japan’s Eyeglass Capital
The city of Sabae, about 10 minutes from Fukui Station on the Hokuriku Line, produces approximately 95% of Japan’s domestically manufactured eyeglass frames — a figure that has made it one of the most quietly fascinating industrial cities in the country and, for anyone who wears glasses or has considered upgrading to a more interesting pair, an essential detour. The Megane Museum (めがねミュージアム), operated by the local industry association and free to enter, is the natural starting point: exhibits trace the history of the Sabae eyeglass industry from its origins in the 1900s, when a local agricultural cooperative turned to frame manufacturing as a winter income source, through to the current era of globally recognized artisan production. The displays include extraordinary historical frames, insight into the precision manufacturing process, and interactive elements that explain why Sabae frames are considered among the finest in the world.
Beyond the museum, the real draw for a girls' trip is the shopping. Several factory showrooms and brand directly-owned shops in and around Sabae sell frames at significantly below Tokyo retail prices, with selection that ranges from the clean, minimal aesthetics of Masunaga and Kaneko Optical — brands that supply high-end opticians in Paris, New York, and Sydney — to more experimental local artisan producers whose work you will not find in any flagship store. Frames in titanium, acetate, and handmade buffalo horn are available for direct purchase, with basic adjustments performed same-day by staff with the kind of specialist skill that makes perfect fitting feel effortless. For custom orders or elaborate prescription specifications, a two-to-three week turnaround applies, but for in-stock frames, the entire experience from entering the showroom to leaving with new glasses on your face can take as little as an hour.
The pleasure of this shopping experience is not merely functional. Trying on frames that you have never seen available at home, in a setting where the person helping you actually made or helped design what they are showing you, with prices that feel genuinely fair rather than bargained — this is the kind of shopping that leaves participants in a good mood for the remainder of the day. Budget between ¥15,000 and ¥60,000 depending on the complexity of the frame and lens specification; bring your current prescription.
Awara Onsen: The Perfect Group Ryokan
Ryokan are made for groups, a fact that is easy to miss if you only ever think of them as intimate couple retreats. The large tatami rooms at Awara Onsen’s major properties sleep four to six guests comfortably on futons, the communal baths are most enjoyable when you arrive together and stay as long as you like, the yukata provided for all guests create an immediate visual cohesion that makes evening strolls look and feel festive, and the kaiseki dinner served in a private dining room for your group is a meal format perfectly suited to conversation and laughter. A two-night stay at Awara with your group is the accommodations centerpiece of any Fukui girls' trip.
Awara’s leading ryokan — Seikiro and Matsuya Kikusuiro among the most respected — offer different room configurations, and booking a large tatami room for four to six people rather than individual smaller rooms is both the most economical approach and the most fun. Rates at quality establishments run approximately ¥30,000 to ¥50,000 per person per night including dinner and breakfast, which covers a multi-course kaiseki dinner served privately to your group, the full bath facilities, and morning breakfast before departure. Request a communal dining room rather than individual room service if your group prefers eating together rather than in your own room — both options are usually available.
The evening program at Awara follows a pattern that rewards complete surrender to it. Dinner runs from about 6pm to 8pm, with courses arriving at a measured pace. Afterward, the group changes back into yukata and explores the Yumachi promenade — a lantern-lit pedestrian street lined with traditional buildings, sweet shops selling manju, and small galleries — before returning for a late-evening bath session when the communal baths are quieter. At the larger ryokan, evening geisha performances can be arranged with advance request, a traditional entertainment that ranges from charming to genuinely memorable depending on the performers and the mood of the room. Ask about availability when booking.
Washi Paper Workshops and Echizen Crafts
Echizen has been producing washi — traditional Japanese handmade paper — for at least 1,500 years, and the town’s Udatsu Paper Village district, anchored by the Papyrus Museum, is the most accessible entry point into that history and its living craft practice. The workshop experiences offered here translate especially well to groups: the washi-making process is collaborative by nature, with groups sharing vat stations and helping each other achieve the even, rhythmic pull-and-drain motion that produces a good sheet. The basic washi-making workshop runs 30 minutes and costs ¥1,100 per person, resulting in a sheet of handmade paper that can be decorated with pressed flowers, colored fiber, or leaf patterns.
For groups wanting a more substantial craft project, the lampshade workshop at ¥2,500 per person produces a washi paper lantern shade that actually lights up and travels reasonably well as checked luggage if protected. Note card decorating at a lower price point suits those who want the experience more than the artifact. The Papyrus Museum’s own collection of historic washi documents and production tools provides context that makes the workshop feel connected to something larger than a craft activity — the paper produced here in previous centuries was used for government records, Buddhist scripture copying, and the correspondence of feudal lords.
The broader Echizen Udatsu district, with its preserved historic paper-maker townhouses and narrow streets, is genuinely pleasant for a post-workshop wander. Several small shops sell washi goods — notebooks, envelopes, wrapping paper, accessories — at reasonable prices, along with local ceramics and craft items that make excellent gifts. A lunch stop at a local restaurant in Echizen before driving or taking transit to Tojinbo or Awara turns the craft morning into a complete and satisfying day.
Instagram Moments: Fukui’s Most Photogenic Spots
Fukui consistently undersells itself as a visual destination, which means that the photographs you take here are genuinely unusual rather than variations on images already seen ten thousand times. Tojinbo at golden hour — the basalt cliffs catching low orange light while the sea below shifts from green to deep blue — produces dramatic landscape photographs that do not look like anyone else’s Fukui content because almost no one is there to create it. The cliff path offers multiple angles: looking along the column faces from the south, looking out over open water from the main viewpoint, and from the sightseeing boat looking back up at the formations from sea level.
Eiheiji’s interior — the covered wooden corridors ascending the hillside, the lantern-lit halls, the moss-covered stone paths between buildings — offers a quality of atmospheric interior photography that is difficult to achieve anywhere more crowded. Photography is permitted in the courtyard and corridor areas, and the quality of light filtering through the cedar canopy in the early morning or in the soft overcast of a rainy day is the kind of light that photographers specifically schedule travel around. Heisenji Hakusan Shrine’s moss-carpeted cedar grove produces photographs of deep, saturated green that look more like CGI than reality until you show people the place in question.
Maruoka Castle during cherry blossom season in April offers sakura and historic architecture in combination, with illuminated evening sessions that create a romantically blurred foreground-background effect in any photograph taken with a longer exposure. The moss forest at Heisenji at dawn, with mist moving through the trees, produces images of ethereal quality. Along the coast, the colorful fishing boats of Mikuni harbor at dawn — orange, blue, white against the grey water — are an underused visual subject. The clifftop café near Echizen, with its unobstructed sea view, makes a natural mid-afternoon coffee and photography stop.
Crab Dinner and Evening Out
A Fukui girls' trip culminates naturally in a group crab dinner, and the harbor restaurants of Mikuni are the ideal setting. Rather than individual full kaiseki courses — which are wonderful but expensive at ¥15,000 to ¥25,000 per person — a group of four to six booking a private tatami room at a Mikuni harbor restaurant and sharing large communal platters of Echizen crab is both more economical and more fun. A whole crab shared between two people, with individual dishes of kani sashimi and a shared kani nabe hot pot to finish, costs approximately ¥8,000 to ¥12,000 per person and creates a table-filling, active meal format that generates the kind of shared experience that groups travel for.
The izakaya-style harbor restaurants in Mikuni have a livelier energy than formal ryokan kaiseki — sake comes in ceramic carafes, the staff are cheerful, and the noise level allows conversation that the hushed formality of ryokan dining does not. After dinner, the harbor area has a casual evening character, with small bars and coffee shops open in the streets behind the waterfront. The contrast between the quiet luxury of Awara’s ryokan evenings and the relaxed liveness of Mikuni’s harbor restaurants gives a Fukui girls' trip a satisfying variety of register. Both are worth experiencing, and a two-night Awara stay combined with one dinner in Mikuni achieves both without requiring either to carry more weight than it naturally should.
Practical Planning for a Fukui Girls' Trip
Four to five nights provides comfortable pacing: two nights in Awara for the ryokan experience, one night near Echizen or Sabae for the craft and shopping day, and one or two nights in Fukui City as a base for Tojinbo, Eiheiji, and urban dining. Car rental from Fukui Station significantly increases flexibility along the coast and between Sabae, Echizen, and the temple areas — Fukui’s roads are uncrowded and driving is genuinely easy compared to any urban prefecture. Groups of four splitting a rental car make the transport costs modest.
Sabae’s eyeglass shopping and the Echizen craft workshop are best tackled on the same day, as they are geographically adjacent and both run efficiently in three to four hours combined. The Awara onsen stay is the non-negotiable centerpiece and should be booked two to three months ahead for weekend dates, particularly in winter when crab season demand is highest. Summer visits trade crab for coast: beach time at Echizen or Takahama, sea kayaking at Mikata Lakes, and the softer light of long summer evenings on the Tojinbo cliffs. Spring brings cherry blossoms to Maruoka and wildflowers along the coast road. Every season in Fukui gives a girls' trip something specific and real to organize itself around.
