A Day Trip to the Ancient Crafts of Echizen

TLDR

I visited Echizen, a small city in the Japan countryside, famous for a long history of crafts. Echizen has a unique, little-known, and growing tourism program. To help future English-speaking tourists, I made public resources that map program locations to Google Maps. Use and copy freely!

The resources: spreadsheet, google map.

Off the Beaten Path

I made pilgrimage to Eiheiji Temple, the great granddaddy temple of Zen Mountain Monastary, in Fukui Prefecture, Japan. To make the most of a trek into the countryside, I looked for nearby entertainment. Inspired by this blog post, I did a day-trip to the neighboring Echizen, an ancient crafts town. 1500 years ago (!), great quality water was discovered in Echizen and it became the home of many water-reliant crafts. Today, masters of pottery, knives, washi paper, soba noodles, and more are still active.

As of 2023, Echizen has designed a unique tourism program that made traveling in an off-the-beaten-path rural area very accessible and inexpensive. It is still a work in progress, but I was impressed: it was clear, user-friendly, has a lot of potential for other rural towns who want to grow tourism.

Note: I didn't take any photos and only thought of writing this after the fact.

I did not organize my visit to Echizen well at all. There are many sights sprinkled across a ~10 mile (~16km) radius. I didn't know where to go, or how to get there, until I showed up at the Echizen Tourism Office. On top of that, I don't speak any Japanese and only had 1/2 a day to explore because I missed an infrequent village bus (which had cascading effects on the schedule).

Transportation around Echizen:

Rent a car
Rent a bicycle
Bike rental is available through the tourist information center at Takefu Station. The bikes looked new and comfortable, but are more of a leisure bike than a sports bike. Echizen is pretty flat, so this is probably fine, and it would be a 20-40 ride between some main destinations, possibly longer. The roads would be mixed between rice fields and highways. Bike rental info is missing from Google Maps, and I didn't see other bike rental shops. You must have a form of identification to rent a bike.
500 yen taxi
This program is so awesome. Echizen provides heavily subsidized taxi rides between any program-approved sites. The list includes shops, restaurants, museums, temples, hotels, and train stations, but notably (at the time of writing) is missing lacquerware and pottery sites. Planning an itinerary requires some type of map. The program has some cutesy printed tourist maps but it takes work to match sites to their anonymous map marker. The text spreadsheet of sites rarely matched to Google Maps' data. I took one afternoon to translate the spreadsheet into this Google map for public use: spreadsheet, google map. Back to the taxi program...if paying by taximeter, Washi Village to Tafeku Station would be over 3000 yen! This is 500 yen per taxi, not per person. Using the taxi service requires you pre-planning your route because you must purchase vouchers at a tourist information center ahead of time. Taxi drivers seemed happy to participate. I did not have a working phone in Japan, and shopkeepers helped me call a taxi: they are well aware of the taxi program, so it did not require any explanation. Taxis arrived within 5-10 minutes of a call. One of my taxis was an old (but pristine) Nissan, which felt like tourism in and of itself to see.
Walk
Some sites are very close together or close to the train station, in which case I just walked between them.
Bus
Infrequent and, as far as I searched, geared toward locals and not tourism. Buses did not stop at or near main tourist sites.

I visited on a Monday. All day I saw < 15 tourists and, except for me, they were all Japanese or spoke fluent Japanese.

First, I needed lunch. On my way to the soba noodle restaurant, I wandered the "downtown", which was quiet and pretty desolate. Some buildings were properly old, abandoned, and somewhat interesting to look at in contrast to Kyoto which was old, but actively-maintained and dense. The restaurant was in a properly old building and the vibes, food, and inner courtyard were excellent and left an impression, 10/10.

I then took a taxi to the Knife Village. The location contains a little museum, store and the active workshop of a cooperative of knife makers. Makers were all men, and varied in age (many quite young! The craft is alive and well!). My favorite part was watching the craftsmen forge, pound out and polish their products. The store sells knives with more unique (prettyyyy) handles than I've ever seen. The museum was small, and low in information. I would have liked the opportunity to talk to an artisan, and have more information about the knives for sale and their qualities. Unfortunately (for a tourist) the knife shops around town are scattered, so the Knife Village is the most concentrated place to go. While overall I was pretty underwhelmed, I'd still recommend a quick stop if you're in Echizen.

I really enjoyed the Washi Paper Village, which has a DIY workshop, professional workshop, shop and museum. I'd never seen paper making before. The highlight for me was watching a young craftwoman (26 y.o.) make washi paper and chatting with her about her life. At the Washi Paper and Culture Museum, I saw the artistic potential of washi paper and learned how printmaking with wood blocks works via a video that was offered in Japanese or English. The museum was small but I enjoyed it thoroughly. I have new respect for paper! Arrive before 2pm to have enough time to do everything.

When planning a trip to Echizen, here's my advice:

For crafts workshops, plan at least a month ahead. Some workshops require prior reservation. The soba workshop was booked out 1 week. Knife workshops are once in a while. The washi paper workshop (@Papyrus) is walk-in for individuals/small groups, but it closes at 4:30p (so arrive before 3pm).
Get started early (9A, when businesses open). Craft businesses do close between 4-5pm, mindful of last entry time (30 min before close). If you, like me, prefer unhurried travel, consider visiting for 2 days.
The taxi program is a fantastic deal for 1-4 travelers. The only downside was being locked into fixed locations. No stopping for cool looking things on the side of the road.
Visit Monday, or W-F; craftspeople enjoy the weekend too and many sites close on Tuesday.