Fukui Prefecture does not appear on most honeymoon shortlists, and that is precisely its advantage. While Kyoto’s famous ryokan fill months in advance and Hakone’s onsen towns manage traffic jams of newlywed couples, Fukui offers something rarer: genuine solitude, extraordinary food, and one of Japan’s most beautiful natural settings without the obligation to share it with everyone else who read the same travel magazine. The prefecture’s combination of Awara Onsen’s elegant ryokan culture, the austere spiritual beauty of Eiheiji Temple, winter’s Echizen crab season, and the wild drama of the Sea of Japan coast creates a honeymoon itinerary that is quieter, more personal, and — for the right couple — more deeply memorable than anything along the standard Golden Route.
Awara Onsen: The Art of the Ryokan for Two
Awara Onsen, less than 30 minutes from Fukui Station by the Echizen Railway, is the hot spring town that anchors any romantic Fukui itinerary. The onsen water here is colorless and mildly alkaline, famous for its skin-softening qualities, and the town’s handful of distinguished ryokan have been hosting guests seeking restoration and pleasure for well over a century. For honeymooners, the defining feature of an Awara stay is the kashikiri-buro — the private reserved bath that the finest ryokan offer as a room amenity or as an add-on reservation. Soaking together in a cedar-lined private bath, often with a garden view or an open-air section looking onto a small courtyard, with no timeline and complete privacy, is an experience that distills what Japanese onsen culture is actually about.
The ryokan Seikiro and Matsuya Kikusuiro are among Awara’s most respected establishments. Both offer room categories with private bath access, garden-facing rooms, and the full kaiseki dinner service that is the other defining pleasure of a ryokan stay. Rates run from approximately ¥30,000 to ¥60,000 per person per night including dinner and breakfast — a significant investment, but one that covers what would otherwise be a premium restaurant meal, accommodation, and a spa experience as separate line items. Book two nights minimum; one night is barely enough time to settle into the unhurried rhythm that makes ryokan stays restorative rather than merely interesting.
Evening in Awara unfolds at the pace that yukata and wooden sandals naturally impose. After the in-room kaiseki dinner service — courses brought quietly and precisely by your attendant, with pauses between each to allow genuine appreciation — guests typically wander the Yumachi promenade in the ryokan’s provided yukata, past lantern-lit traditional buildings and small shops selling local sweets. There is a quality of enchantment to this evening walk that photographs adequately but that photographs never quite capture: the sound of geta on stone, the smell of mineral water, the muffled shamisen from an interior room. It is the kind of moment couples return home talking about long after they have forgotten specific restaurant names.
Echizen Crab: One of Japan’s Great Romantic Dinners
Between November and March, Fukui’s culinary identity is defined almost entirely by kani — the Echizen snow crab, caught in the Sea of Japan and landed at ports including Mikuni and Tsuruga. A full crab kaiseki course, whether served in your ryokan room at Awara or at one of the celebrated harbor restaurants in Mikuni, is widely considered one of the most sensually satisfying meals in Japanese cuisine. It is also, as formal food experiences go, remarkably intimate — the process of cracking shells, extracting leg meat, and sharing a hot pot across a low table creates a natural conversation and laughter that more formal dining environments discourage.
A complete kani kaiseki course begins with kani sashimi: the raw crab meat arranged on ice, translucent and sweet, eaten with a light ponzu dipping sauce. This is followed by a steamed whole crab, then grilled crab legs whose charred edges intensify the briny sweetness of the flesh. A kani nabe — hot pot with crab, tofu, and vegetables in a light dashi broth — follows, and the meal traditionally concludes with kani miso zosui, a porridge made with the rich crab brain cooked into rice, which is the kind of dish that stops conversation entirely. Budget approximately ¥15,000 to ¥25,000 per person for a full course at a quality establishment. Reservations should be made one to two months in advance for winter weekends — this is not a meal that tolerates last-minute impulse.
Outside the crab season, Mikuni and the Echizen coast offer excellent seafood of a different character: the kinki rockfish prized for its fatty richness, local sea urchin in summer, and winter yellowtail caught off the Sea of Japan shelf. Spring and autumn bring their own pleasures, and while the crab season defines Fukui’s culinary peak, a summer honeymoon centered on fresh sashimi at a harbor restaurant overlooking fishing boats in the evening light carries its own quiet romanticism.
Eiheiji Forest: Stillness at Dawn
Eiheiji Temple, founded in 1244 and still an active training monastery for Soto Zen Buddhism, sits at the end of a narrow valley about 30 minutes by bus from Fukui City, surrounded by sugi cedar trees some of which are more than three centuries old. Most visitors arrive in tour buses between 10am and 3pm, which is why the correct time for a honeymooning couple to be here is 7am — or earlier if they have arranged to stay the previous evening at Hakujukan, the temple’s affiliated guesthouse, at approximately ¥12,000 per person including meals.
In the hour before the tour groups arrive, the temple complex belongs to the monks and to the few quiet visitors willing to rise early enough to be there. The covered wooden corridors connecting the seven main halls creak under foot, and from the meditation halls comes the sound of chanting — low, rhythmic, and deeply affecting even to those with no particular relationship to Zen Buddhism. Stone steps ascend through the cedar grove between buildings, and the light at this hour filters through the canopy in the soft, angled way that photographers pursue and mostly fail to recreate. The moss that covers every stone surface — walls, lanterns, root systems — is a luminous green that seems almost artificial, particularly after rain.
The correct way to move through Eiheiji at dawn is slowly and without agenda. Couples who arrive expecting dramatic photographic moments sometimes miss the actual experience, which is cumulative and quiet. The smell of incense and cedar together, the sound of water in the stream running through the valley, the sudden appearance of a young monk trainee hurrying between buildings in his robes — these are things that settle into memory rather than photographs. Stop at the gate shops on your way out for Eiheiji brand sesame tofu and locally made Eiheiji soba noodles, specialties of the temple that make excellent breakfast or a morning snack before driving onward.
Tojinbo at Sunset and the Coastal Drive
The basalt columns of Tojinbo, rising from the Sea of Japan on Fukui’s northwest coast, achieve their most spectacular quality in the late afternoon, when the setting sun turns the hexagonal rock faces amber and the sea beyond darkens from green to deep blue. The sightseeing boats that operate from the small harbor below the cliffs run until early evening in summer, and the 30-minute circuit around the columns provides views of the formation that are impossible from the cliff top alone — looking up at the rock faces from sea level while the sky changes color behind them is an experience of considerable drama. After the boat, walk the cliff-top path southward from the main viewing area as the light continues to fall, finding progressively quieter spots with unobstructed views over open water.
Dinner after Tojinbo works well in Mikuni, the historic port town about 15 minutes by car, where harbor-front restaurants serve fresh seafood in izakaya-style settings with a relaxed energy quite different from the formality of a ryokan kaiseki. A window table at a small Mikuni restaurant, a bottle of cold local sake, and a shared platter of the day’s catch — whatever the fishing boats brought in that morning — constitutes a different kind of romantic dinner than the ryokan kaiseki, simpler and more spontaneous, and often the more memorable for it.
For couples who enjoy driving, Coastal Route 305 between Echizen and Tojinbo is one of the most scenic half-day drives in the Hokuriku region. The road follows the cliff edge through a succession of sea caves, rock arches, fishing villages, and overlooks, with several pull-off points where you can stop and watch the sea below. The coastline of the Sea of Japan has a wildness to it — the water is rougher, the cliffs less manicured than the Pacific coast, the villages more functional and less tourist-oriented — that suits couples drawn to scenery that feels genuinely removed from urban Japan. A small clifftop café near Echizen serves coffee and local cake with views that would cost triple the price in any comparable location elsewhere in the country.
Practical Honeymoon Planning for Fukui
The optimal season for a Fukui honeymoon depends on your priorities. Winter — November through March — delivers the defining experience of the Echizen crab season alongside the particular beauty of snow-covered ryokan gardens and steaming outdoor baths in cold air. Spring, specifically the second and third week of April, brings cherry blossoms to Maruoka Castle and the river paths of Fukui City. Summer offers the coast at its most swimmable and the Eiheiji cedar forest at its most lush, though crab season will have closed. Autumn — October and November — offers foliage color in the mountain areas around Katsuyama and Eiheiji, and the opening of crab season in November coincides with autumn’s final color.
Ryokan booking requires advance planning regardless of season, but winter weekends and Golden Week dates in late April and early May can fill two to three months out at the better Awara establishments. When booking, request a room with a private bath or private open-air bath section — not all rooms at all properties offer this, and it is worth specifying clearly at reservation. Many ryokan now accept reservations through Jalan, Ikyu, or Relux in English or with English-language interfaces. Cash is essential for rural restaurants and small shops; most ryokan accept credit cards but many harbor restaurants and small cafés do not. A car rental significantly expands what is accessible along the coast, and Fukui’s roads are uncrowded enough to make driving genuinely pleasant rather than stressful.
