Fukui Dinosaur Museum福井県立恐竜博物館

The museum sits inside the Katsuyama Dinosaur Forest (かつやま恐竜の森), a hillside park with free parking. The building is a silver dome with a pyramid beside it, and a dinosaur-headed statue in a lab coat sits reading on a bench in front.

The park also has a pay-per-go digging playground for children from 4 (about ¥600 for children and ¥1,150 for adults, to 23 November; confirm before you go).

The hall holds 51 skeletons among more than a thousand specimens, shown across several levels around a central atrium. English signage and an audio guide app are available.

Entry windows are one hour long but last as long as you want to stay. Re-entry is allowed on the same date, which helps with lunch.

The quarry at Kitadani, just outside Katsuyama, gave Japan Fukuiraptor, Fukuisaurus, Fukuititan, Koshisaurus and Fukuivenator. An animatronic Fukuiraptor roars inside the museum.

The 2026 special exhibition, “Sauropods” (竜脚類), runs 10 July to 3 November. It centres on a 19 m skeleton of the Chinese sauropod Xinjiangtitan and brings every Japanese sauropod site together for the first time.

Three of four menus: rebuild a full-size T. rex skull (from 24 April to 10 November 2026 this replaces the fossil-dig menu), clean a dinosaur tooth out of rock with real tools, and examine fossils on CT images. You can take the cast and the stone around it home.

Elementary school age and up; younger children cannot enter. Groups of 12. Sessions run at 9:20, 10:30, 12:50 and 14:00 on weekdays, with extra slots on weekends and holidays. It is dusty, and the room can feel cold in spring and autumn.

A guided bus tour to Japan’s biggest dinosaur dig, open since 2014 and partly a National Natural Monument since 2017. You see the working quarry, a display of finds, and split fossil-bearing rock yourself. Wear work gloves (on sale on site), and bring a drink and clothes that can get dusty.

Weekday buses leave at 11:00 and 13:30; weekends, holidays and 17–31 August add 10:00 and 14:30. Check in 30 minutes before. The tour is closed on 28 October, bad weather can cancel it, and the guiding is mainly in Japanese.

A short local train up the Kuzuryū valley. At Katsuyama Station the museum bus waits outside, timed to the trains: a typical weekday has a bus about every 30 minutes, 12–14 minutes to the museum for ¥300. The first runs at 8:03 (not Sundays or holidays); the last bus back leaves the museum at 17:13 and connects with the 17:49 train.

The Dinosaur set ticket (¥1,700 adult, ¥900 child) is an Echizen Railway day pass plus Katsuyama buses, valid on museum open days and sold at staffed station windows. Rail and bus separately cost ¥2,240 return, so it saves ¥540.

A Fukuiraptor skeleton stands inside the station, and moving robot dinosaurs fill the plaza outside the West Exit. Both are free and worth five minutes before you change to the Echizen Railway. The Echizen Railway station sits beside the JR one, so the change takes a few minutes.

To skip the rail change, the JR West WOW RIDE XR bus runs from the station direct to the museum with AR images on the windows (¥3,400 weekdays, ¥3,400–¥3,900 weekends; book on Happy Bus). It costs about three times the train.