what to do along latest bullet train route

Japan is launching a latest high-speed bullet train, or shinkansen, extension on Saturday that can make an under-the-radar prefecture much more accessible to travelers.

The coastal Fukui Prefecture is a few 185 miles west of Tokyo. The brand new train will go through the town of Fukui, the town of Awara and other places guidebooks rarely mention, before reaching the port town of Tsuruga, adding some 78 miles to the Hokuriku Shinkansen’s existing Tokyo-to-Kanazawa service.

Once it begins on March 16, the route will open a door to an element of Japan — known for dinosaurs, Zen meditation and soothing hot-spring baths — where few international travelers go.

There’s good reason for that. Near 80% of Japan’s dinosaur fossils were discovered in Fukui, something the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Katsuyama does a wonderful job of detailing in Japanese and English.

Just below an hour from Fukui Station on the trundling Katsuyama-Eiheiji rail line, the cavernous museum houses a set of stays and exhibits on the existence and demise of dinosaurs, plus life-size animatronics of a menacing Tyrannosaurus rex and a long-necked herbivore. Fossil digs within the connected Katsuyama Dinosaur Park add a hands-on element that is especially well-geared for families.

On the local train back to Fukui, travelers desirous about learning about Zen Buddhism can hop off at Eiheijiguchi Station to go to Eiheiji, a temple and monastery founded within the 1200s by the legendary Zen priest and scholar Dogen.

Travelers with a few hours can explore the temple buildings, nevertheless it’s also possible to plan an overnight temple stay that features options for zazen meditation sessions and traditional plant-based Buddhist meals.

With an additional day in Fukui, an alternative choice is to take the brand new shinkansen to Awara for a spot of traditional pampering. Like many small hot spring towns in Japan, the explanation most individuals visit Awara is to spend an evening at a ryokan inn, where they soak in mineral-rich baths, slip into yukata gowns, unwind in tatami mat guestrooms and bask in kaiseki-ryori dinners featuring a photogenic array of small in-season dishes.

But there may be plenty to do in Awara beyond baths and ryokans, with hands-on experiences like glassblowing and ceramics at Kanaz Forest of Creation — a 200,000 square-meter forest home to art installations and walking trails. Rural areas even have orchard-picking — strawberries within the spring and blueberries, grapes and Asian pears in the summertime.

Also along the coast is the Port of Humanity Museum, which details how Jewish refugees from Poland and Lithuania arrived in Tsuruga within the Nineteen Forties after being granted special visas by Japanese diplomat Sugihara Chiune. It’s estimated that Sugihara saved several thousand Jews from Nazi concentration camps.

Travelers may follow the footsteps of the Seventeenth-century haikuist Matsuo Basho, who visited Tsuruga’s Kehi Jingu shrine to see the autumnal full moon during a journey immortalized within the haiku-punctuated travelogue “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.”

The shrine has been rebuilt several times since Basho’s visit, however the version he saw definitely left an impression. “The air of the shrine was hushed within the silence of night,” he wrote, “and the moon through the dark needles of pine shone brilliantly.”

While Basho left Tsuruga plodding slowly south, today express trains run from Tsuruga all the way down to Kyoto in slightly below an hour, or southeast to Nagoya in 90 minutes. Travelers may reboard the brand new shinkansen for the three-hour ride back to Tokyo.