Sakai, Fukui

The cliff face at Tōjinbō drops sheer into the Sea of Japan, columnar basalt columns crowded together like organ pipes. It is a famous edge, but Sakai City extends far inland from it — across fishing harbors at Saki and Kaji, along the Kuzuryūgawa river plain, and up toward the forested slopes of Jōhōji-san to the east.

In Mikuni, the old port district, the weight of the Kitamaebune trading era is still readable in the streetscape. The Ryūshō Museum, built to echo the Meiji-period Ryūshō primary school, holds records of Mikuni Harbor and the culture of the Hokuriku coast. Nearby, the Essel Dike — a breakwater constructed using Dutch engineering — stands as a rare piece of early port infrastructure. The former Morita Bank main building, a reinforced concrete structure from 1920, sits quietly in the same neighborhood, its facade suggesting a prosperity that once moved north along the sea routes. During the Mikuni Festival, the streets take on a different register entirely.

Inland, Maruoka Castle retains its original keep, a structure from the Edo period that still reads as a castle rather than a reconstruction. The local table draws from the surrounding land and sea: Koshihikari rice from the plain, hana-rakkyo, Koshi-no-Ruby tomatoes, and Wakasa beef.丸岡そば — Maruoka soba — is grown and eaten here, a short loop from field to bowl.