Imajō-juku今庄宿

Mountains ring Imajō on every side and every pass over the Nanjō range ran through it, so travellers rested here before the next climb. The town has a crank-shaped bend, a kaneori (かねおり), at both ends, and a surviving signpost at the fork of the Hokkoku Kaidō and the Hokurikudō reads “left: Kyoto, Ise, Edo; right: Kyoto, Tsuruga, Wakasa”.

Along the street are merchant houses, former inns and the late-Meiji house of the Gotō family, the old honjin (the inn kept for lords). The former Kyōtō house, a brewing family’s home, is reported to have been made an Important Cultural Property in fiscal 2025. The area was selected as a preservation district on 2 August 2021 (9.2 ha).

Start here. The centre in the station explains the post town, the railway town and the junction of roads, with a video and a model railway whose window looks onto the real line. A souvenir shop in the station sells local specialities.

The tourism association (0778-45-0074, 9:00–17:00) lends bicycles and arranges volunteer guides; both are booked in Japanese by phone or fax. Free parking is near the station.

Fifteen sake shops once lined the road; four still brew. Horiguchi (堀口酒造, 1618) is the oldest in Fukui, and its Narihisago is named after a poem by Tachibana Akemi. Kitazen (北善商店, 1716) draws from its own 40 m well; Hatakeyama (畠山酒造, 1835) makes Yukikirara and Momokibune; Shirakoma (白駒酒造) has a brewing licence from 1697. The water is soft, drawn through a bedrock of silica.

Hatakeyama offers tasting at its shop and takes tour reservations outside November to March; Kitazen takes tour and tasting reservations. A sake-making experience runs from November to the end of February, except December. The four-brewery set is sold at the station shop and the Michi-no-Eki Minami-Echizen Sankairi.

The local buckwheat is milled on stone and bound with wild yam, then served under grated daikon. The town says the tradition goes back more than 400 years. In the past, it is said, a girl who could not make soba could not marry.

Chūbei Soba (忠兵衛そば) faces the station and opens weekends only, 11:00–14:00 until it sells out (oroshi ¥850). Furusato (ふる里) is 4 minutes away (¥800). Obachan no Mise (おばちゃんの店), run by local women, opens 11:00–14:00 on weekdays and to 15:00 at weekends (oroshi ¥750, Imajō set ¥1,100). Prices are the town’s, from November 2025. The Imajō Soba Dojo teaches you to make a batch of six portions for ¥2,420 (reserve; about 90 minutes).

Tsurushi-gaki are dried persimmons hung in November and smoked as they dry, which the town says is done nowhere else in Japan. The workshop (early to late November, ¥3,500, five persimmons to take home) is at Ichinose Sansō in Futatsuya (0778-45-0239); yours is collected two weeks later or posted.

The Takano Yoshibei Shop (高野由平商店), a former inn, makes kanro umeniku, a sweet plum paste with no additives, from Wakasa plums that a Wakasa lord once carried here as gifts.

The Tsuruga–Fukui railway opened in 1896. Between Tsuruga and Imajō it needed 12 tunnels and a steep climb over Yamanaka Pass; 11 survive and the old line is now a prefectural road. At Imajō every train stopped to add a second locomotive at the back for the climb. A D51 steam engine is on show outside the community centre.

An October walk follows the old line. The Yamanaka Tunnel was closed on weekdays for repairs from 30 April to 12 November 2025, so ask the information centre before you set out.