Japan once had more than 3,000 shibai-goya — the timber playhouses where kabuki, puppet theatre and popular drama were staged. Around thirty survive. One of them spent years as a car repair shop, then a sake warehouse, then stood empty — and is now back in use as a theatre.
Asahiza, built in 1910 and rebuilt on its present site in Obama, Fukui, is free to visit. Around it sit the starting point of the Mackerel Road, a free museum about it, a 300-year-old vinegar brewer selling soft-serve ice cream, and a fish market where you grill your own catch over charcoal. This third report from Obama covers the lot.
Earlier in this series: the student-run aquarium and the Mackerel Road food museum, and the preserved streets of Nishigumi.
Asahiza: A Meiji Playhouse That Came Back From Being a Warehouse
About five minutes’ walk from JR Obama Station, close to the sea, is a visitor hub called Obama Machi-no-Eki Asahiza. At its centre stands the Asahiza itself — a timber playhouse dated to 1910, and the only building in Fukui Prefecture descended from the pre-war theatre tradition.
Inside, the reconstruction includes a hanamichi — the raised walkway through the audience used in kabuki — and seats roughly 170 people on floor mats, or about 200 in chairs. The total floor area is 469.27 sq m. It is still a working theatre, with performances and events programmed through the year.
The building originally stood in the Sumiyoshi district, next to the preserved streets of Nishigumi. Obama was thriving then as a Kitamaebune port, and the Asahiza was the symbol of its entertainment culture.
It was more than a theatre. In its day it was the largest assembly hall in Obama, used for lectures, political speeches and celebrations, and from the early Showa period through the post-war years it served as a cinema.
After that it passed through a series of owners: a car repair workshop, then a sake warehouse, then an empty shed.
How Do You Restore a Building That Spent Decades as a Warehouse?
Buildings deteriorate badly in that kind of use, and most are simply demolished. But in 2010 the young members’ section of the Fukui Architects Association asked the city to look inside — and the survey found the structural frame and traces of the original fittings in remarkably good condition.
Once full restoration was shown to be possible, the building was designated a city cultural property in June 2014, and in May 2016 it was moved and rebuilt on its current site as the centrepiece of the Machi-no-Eki complex.
The restoration targeted the building as it stood in 1910. A theatre programme from January 1911 records that the house “had been closed, but was newly completed last year, opening with a New Year’s Day performance” — which pinned down the construction date. About 40% of the material is original timber from the old Asahiza, and the roof tiles over the main entrance are the original Wakasa tiles, reused.
Free to Visit — But Check the Event Calendar
Those Wakasa tiles matter. The last craftsman making them closed his workshop in 2010, and nobody fires them any more. Tiles that can no longer be produced are on the entrance roof of this building.
The interior is free to visit, from 10:00 to 16:00. On event days there is no public viewing, so check the official site before you go.
Obama Machi-no-Eki Asahiza
Address: 111-1 Obama Shirahige, Obama City, Fukui Prefecture
Public viewing: 10:00–16:00 (not available on event days)
Admission: free
Closed: Tuesdays (the following day if Tuesday is a public holiday), 29 December – 3 January
Capacity: about 170 on floor seating / about 200 in chairs
Machi-no-Eki means roughly “town station” — a visitor hub with an information desk, shops and facilities, found in towns across Japan. It is the urban cousin of the roadside michi-no-eki you see on highways. If you are new to a Japanese town and unsure where to start, this is usually the place.
The Hub Around It: Bikes, Plant-Based Waffles and Local Goods
Everything you need for a day on foot is gathered here.
The information desk hands out tourist material and event listings for the theatre — the place to ask whether you are on the right bus, or what to buy as a gift.
Cafe Seasons inside serves plant-based food made without wheat, dairy, eggs or refined sugar, including animal-free waffles (Fri, Sat, Sun and public holidays, 11:30–17:00, last orders 16:00). The shop Ohama-san (10:00–17:00, closed Tuesdays) sells Obama glasswork, local produce, gluten-free sweets and noodles, and fruit juices.
There are also electric-assist rental bicycles, which make short work of the hills. Register at the information desk: ¥500 (yen) for up to 2 hours, ¥810 (yen) for up to 4 hours, ¥1,520 (yen) for up to 8 hours. Worth considering for the trip out to the Nishigumi preservation district.
Between the theatre and the shops is an open plaza. Parking is free, with 20 spaces for cars, and the Ningyo-no-hama East car park nearby is also free.
Fukui is where a great deal of Japan’s dinosaur fossil material has been found, and the prefecture leans into it hard — hence the bronze statue. The Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum, one of the largest of its kind in the world, is in Katsuyama, about two and a half hours away by car in the north of the prefecture.
Kilometre Zero of the Mackerel Road
There is a saying here: “Kyo wa toote mo juhachi-ri” — “Kyoto may be far, but it is only eighteen ri“, about 72km. It was what the porters told themselves as they carried heavy loads of mackerel over the mountains. So where were those eighteen ri measured from? The answer is set into a street in Obama.
The Saba Kaido was the route that carried mackerel and other seafood from Wakasa Bay to the imperial court. A plaque marking its starting point sits in the Izumi-cho district, in what was once a shopping street. There is no fence and no gate — it is simply there, at any hour. From this plaque the road ran south, over the mountains, to Kyoto.
This is where the first step was taken, by people who walked through the night with salted mackerel on their shoulders. Standing on that spot knowing what it is, rather than walking past it, changes how the asphalt looks.
The Saba Kaido Museum: Free, With Kitamaebune Photographs and Trick Art
Directly in front of the marker is the Obama City Saba Kaido Museum, which opened on 8 March 2020 — chosen because in Japanese wordplay 3 and 8 read as sa-ba.
It serves as the guidance centre for the Saba Kaido as a designated Japan Heritage site, introducing Obama’s cultural properties, performing arts and festivals, with film and displays on the exchange the road created.
There are paintings and photographs of the Kitamaebune, the merchant fleets that worked between Hokkaido and Osaka from the Edo period into the mid-Meiji era, trading at each port along the way.
Seeing that many sails strung out across the Sea of Japan gives you a sense of how busy this route was.
Sailing down from Otaru in Hokkaido and calling at ports along the way, the fleets reached Obama and Tsuruga — the harbours closest to the court in Kyoto — where cargo was transferred from sea to the overland Saba Kaido.
Hokkaido sent herring, herring roe and kelp south; the rest of Honshu sent salt, soy sauce, rice, sugar, sake, cotton, paper, coal and iron. The museum stands exactly where sea route met land route.
One more thing catches the eye: the trick art, with a mackerel leaping out at you and a setup that makes you look as though you have boarded a Kitamaebune. Good for photographs, particularly with children.
There is a Saba Kaido stamp too, worth collecting while you are here.
Collecting rubber stamps (sutanpu) at stations, museums and tourist sites is a national habit in Japan, and a free souvenir. Many travellers carry a small notebook for them. You will find stamp desks at most railway stations and visitor centres.
Elsewhere in the museum, a single chart lays out the year in this Mikketsukuni province: which festivals fell when, and which ingredients were in season — a calendar of what people ate and what they celebrated.
Obama City Saba Kaido Museum
Address: 17-1 Obama Hiromine, Obama City, Fukui Prefecture
Open: 9:00–17:00
Closed: Tuesdays, 29 December – 3 January
Admission: free
Access: 6–10 minutes on foot from JR Obama Station; about 6 minutes by car from the Obama interchange
A Vinegar House Founded in 1710 — and Its Soft-Serve
Close by is Tobaya Su-ten, a rice vinegar brewer well known in Obama. Founded in 1710, it has kept to natural fermentation since.
The shop carries the full range of house-made vinegars.
The method has not changed: carefully selected rice and koji, fermented undisturbed and matured slowly.
The Sakai branch sells vinegar-syrup soft-serve ice cream, made with the shop’s popular osumitsu syrup. It is mellow and clean, with just enough acidity showing through — good in summer, but honestly good all year.
Tobaya Su-ten, Sakai branch
Open: 9:30–17:30, closed Mondays and occasional irregular days
Access: 5 minutes by car from the Obama interchange; 10 minutes on foot from JR Obama Station
The Sakai branch does not brew on site, but the main brewery offers tours by reservation, with an explanation of the company’s history and its approach to vinegar.
Brewery tour, Tobaya Su-ten head office
Monday to Saturday, 10:00–16:00, about 20 minutes
Address: 34-6-2 Higashi-ichiba, Obama City, Fukui 917-0232
Reservations by telephone: 0120-56-1514
Access: from JR Obama Station, take the JR bus (Wakae Line, bound for Omi-Imazu Station) about 15 minutes to Higashi-ichiba, then 1 minute on foot
Wakasa Obama Fish Centre: Buy It, Then Grill It Yourself
About 20 minutes’ walk from JR Obama Station, near the water, is the Wakasa Obama Fish Centre.
Anyone can buy here, tourists included, and the fish comes straight off the local boats. It opens around 7:00, and each stall closes when its fish runs out.
Freshness is everything with fish, and this close to the water it shows.
Alongside the fresh fish are the stalls’ own dried and prepared products.
What is good changes with the season, so you get whatever is at its best that week.
Wakasa Obama Fish Centre
Open: 7:00 to around 12:00 (each stall closes when sold out)
Closed: Wednesdays (occasional irregular closures), and around New Year
Address: 2-5-1 Kawasaki, Obama City, Fukui 917-0081
Access: about 5 minutes by car or 17 minutes on foot from JR Obama Station
The Charcoal Grill Yard
Here is the part worth planning for. You can eat what you just bought, at the shichirin grill yard on the same site.
Bring your fish over and grill it on charcoal on the spot. Staff light the charcoal for you, so you can turn up with nothing and still end up eating charcoal-grilled fish.
Shoyu-boshi — fish marinated in a soy-based sauce and dried — is a local speciality, made not only with mackerel but with small sea bream, flounder, horse mackerel and sandfish from Wakasa Bay.
If you come to the fish centre, come with time for this.
Shichirin grill yard, Wakasa Obama Fish Centre
Open: 8:00–13:00 (closes early in bad weather; may close without notice)
Closed: Wednesdays, winter (December to February), and in bad weather
Charge: ¥300 (yen) adults / ¥100 (yen) children (ages 3 to elementary school)
Note the winter closure: the grill yard shuts from December through February, which is exactly when Fukui’s crab season draws the most Japanese visitors. The market hall itself stays open — it is the outdoor grilling that stops.
Sashimi at the Market
The fish centre also has restaurants. We ate at Sashimi-dokoro Goemon.
The menu runs on what the port lands, and the sashimi set arrives looking like this.
Also on offer: seafood rice bowls, sea urchin bowls, salmon roe bowls and a grilled mackerel set.
Sashimi-dokoro Goemon
Address: inside Wakasa Obama Fish Centre, 2-5-1 Kawasaki, Obama City, Fukui
Open: 06:00–14:00 and from 17:00
Closed: Wednesdays
Sashimi set ¥1,700 (yen) (approx. $12) / seafood bowl ¥2,000 (yen) (approx. $14)
A Meiji playhouse pulled back from life as a warehouse, the first step of a road that fed the imperial court, and a market where the fish you buy goes straight onto your own charcoal. Take the Hokuriku Shinkansen and the Obama Line, and give yourself a day for it.
The Obama Series
Four reports from this port town on the Sea of Japan, two hours north of Kyoto:
1. Meiji streets, a mermaid legend and Fukui’s last geisha quarter
2. A student-run aquarium, and the road that fed the imperial court
3. A Meiji playhouse, and grilling your own fish at the market (this article)
Story and photos by Keigo Kamada
Tetsudo Channel — Travel & Weekend Outings