Fukiya Village | A Hidden Gem Frozen in Time/ 日本遺産「ジャパンレッド発祥の地」吹屋ふるさと村・隠れた岡山観光
All right. Hello everyone and welcome to technically Takahashi City in Okyama Prefecture and we are going to take a stroll along the Hukia village and so we are really far away from the city center of Takahashi, but we are going to take a stroll. Hello. All right, we’re going to take a stroll here through uh the Hookia village. And uh it is a very uh it’s a small town. It’s just got one road going through it. And you can see uh it’s almost like time has frozen here. Okay. It looks like a cycling competition was here, the Hill Climb Challenge Series back in uh 2011. So anyway, this is a uh very well preserved historic village and uh this town was actually pretty prosperous in the past. And actually, this is kind of the main entrance into the the village. And right down there is the parking lot. So, this is a Golden Week. It’s a Sunday. And you can see even during Golden Week, it’s not that crowded. And I haven’t seen any foreign tourists here. So, uh I’m sure if you come here during the week or even outside of uh Gordon Week, it would be fewer people than what you see in this video. But, uh yeah, like I was saying, it’s a uh it was a very prosperous town. There’s a copper mine not too far from here, and uh the people who lived here worked in the mine. So, some of these families were very, very wealthy. Today, these buildings have been very well preserved and turned into little cafes and shops. And in fact, just up here on the right, you’ll see where we had lunch. There’s a uh a person from Nepal who has opened up his own restaurant inside one of these traditional houses and uh he makes authentic Nepalese curry is a meat curry. And you’ll notice the color red, this kind of dark colored red on all of these houses. And that’s the pigment that they use is called Bengara I guess is the English pronunciation. So here it is. This is the place where we had lunch. It was very very good. Recommend it. So, lots of little restaurants and cafes here. You can see people have uh set up some stands selling some some uh sweets. So, this uh Bengara pigment is used for many different reasons and uh it’s used for dying for dying fabrics and a lot of the local arts and crafts here use that pigment. This is a public toilet actually. Yeah. And this restaurant up here on the right seems to be very popular. People have been waiting pretty much all day. So, some of these uh houses, as I said, uh are owned by very wealthy families because of the copper mine. And today, some of them you can actually pay and go inside and see what they look like. And actually, if I can, I’ll take you inside one of those houses in this video. So there you go. You can see some of the fabrics here. Yeah, it looks very elegant. They make scarves, bags, hats, dresses. They do have these uh little golf carts here. They take people around. to some of the places that are a little bit further away. For example, here this is the former Hukia Elementary School building. Looks really nice actually. So, wow, look at that. And here’s the post office. And the pigment is actually used on these houses to protect them from fire and uh from the heavy rain. So it has multiple purposes. Uh, and dying is one of those as I mentioned. Then here, this is a sake brewery. It’s a Nago sake brewery, but it’s empty now, but you can see the building itself has been preserved. And then over here, they still make sake, I guess, and uh they sell it here. Here’s a coffee shop. So, this place is pretty much off the radar for a lot of people. Uh, even a lot of Japanese people don’t know this place. So, uh, if you can make the trip out here, it’s definitely worth it. This is the Hukia Folk Museum here. So, think I may go in there just after I finish filming here. And then maybe the Katayyama residence is here, maybe. Yeah. So, here. This one looks a little bit more modern, recently renovated maybe. So to get here, uh, you need to go to Okyama City, which you can easily get there by bullet train from Osaka and Tokyo. It’s a nice view looking down onto the town. And then from Okyama, we ran out of car. It was about an hour and a half from Okyama station going down some very narrow lanes. Uh very narrow street, just a oneway going through the mountains. But getting here was really beautiful, really nice nature. And then uh we had free parking here as I showed you at the beginning of the video. So, we’re getting close to the end of the the village here. So, as you can see, uh you can walk through it in about 10 minutes, but definitely take it slow, enjoy the the nice restaurants and uh the museums, do some shopping. And this is a shrine here. We’re going to go up these stairs. There’s a Little shrine up here. There it is. Nice peaceful shrine here in the back of the village. And of course, beautiful, beautiful views up here from the top onto the countryside of Okyama Prefecture. See some of the beautiful mountains there in the distance. And also you can see the village right down below with that classic red color. All right. So, that’s a quick walk here through the Hookia Village. And like I said, I’m going to go into the museum in one of the old residences, and if I can film, I will bring that to you. So, anyway, let’s keep going. I’ll see you later. Bye. All right. So, now we are going to go into one of these old historic houses here. This is the Kat Katyama residence. We’re going to go inside and take a look around. I’ve already bought a ticket, so we can go inside. And they said it’s okay to film. So, just give you an idea of what some of these houses look like on the inside. This was one of the wealthiest families that lived here in uh the Hookia Village. Guess this is the kitchen area here, the cooking. You can see the sink area here. And then over here to the right is the the living space, the bedrooms and the office and things like that. in the back. Let’s go back here. They got some warehouses and uh you can really learn about the history of Bengar, the production So the uh Katyama family as I said was a very wealthy family here in the Hukia village and they owned a business in the Bengara production industry. their their business was successful for over 250 years. And so there are a few houses like this that are open to the public today. And you can buy a single ticket and have entry to all of the different uh places. There’s also a museum just across the street, which is what I showed you when I walked through the when I walked through the village. I’ll be going over there next. Yeah. So you just see the old traditional buildings and you can imagine uh a lot of people working here in the past and uh producing the famous Bengara, the Japan red as they call it here. So anyway, like I said, it was a thousand yen or about $10 and you can get entry into five different locations. Very quickly, take you through the living space. You got to take off your shoes and uh you can actually go upstairs, but it’s super steep. And I’m not going to do that again. Uh, but I think this will kind of give you an idea of the residence here. Very old traditional Japanese style. This is for the family altar. There it is, the inner garden here that a lot of old traditional Japanese houses have. So anyway, uh that is a quick run through here at the Katayyama residence and then next I’ll go over to the Folk Museum across the street. Okay. All right, everybody. So this is the uh the folk museum here for the Hookia Museum and uh just across the street here from the Katyama residence and uh yeah went inside we got one ticket so we can go to all the places for 1,000 yen. Um inside the house or inside the museum it looks really really similar to the Katayyama residence. So I think uh if you saw the earlier uh segment of this video you probably know and understand what the inside would look like. So I’m not going to show that to you again. But uh yeah, I think it’s probably worth it to buy the ticket and uh to to go to all the locations here in the Hukia village. So anyway, we’re going to keep going around and taking in the sites. So I’ll see you soon. All right, everybody, and welcome to the Bangara Factory Museum. And here’s a brief explanation in uh English. And you can see some information here. It says Bengara is a copper sulfate coloring agent used in a variety of dyes and coloring processes. Wow. Oh my hair. Yes. And this is a uh UNESCO World Heritage site. This is heritage of the industrial modernization of Japan. And so this is the museum here, the factory museum. And uh you can see just the color of these buildings itself are very red from the Bengara pigment coloring. So I’m just going to give you a very brief tour here of the museum and it’s just basically uh the factory itself and uh there is some information here in Japanese about the process of how they make the uh the pigment. So, I think the best English information is uh what I showed you at the beginning of the video. I’m not going to go through every uh through every building here, but uh you can just kind of get a get a feel for this place. So, a lot of the tools that they used are still here. You can see like a oldfashioned wheelbarrow here. Ah, it was the other building. Yeah, this is what I wanted to show you. So, water mill here. So, it’s pretty interesting to see. You can see it’s going around and around pretty pretty fast. There it is. Some of the tools. All right. So, there it is. That’s just a very quick look around the Bangar factory museum. We’re going to keep going around. So, I’ll see you later. Bye. All right, everybody. And welcome to the Sasa UN miner shaft or actually uh more appropriately this is the copper mine that uh that was used here in uh the Hukia village here. Unfortunately uh as you can see here it is under construction and we are not allowed to go in. Uh we do have that ticket uh that 1,000 yen ticket that allows us to enter all the different places including this. It is not on the um as as I said it’s not open so we’re not able to go in. Uh but anyway hopefully if you come here it will be open at that time. I don’t have any information about when it will be open but uh this area is about 1 kilometer just outside of um the main Pukia village area. So not so far away. And they do have a little golf cart theme. They uh shuttle people around to the different sites like that. So, uh, anyway, one of the things I read was inside the mine, it stays a cool 15 degrees Celsius year round and, uh, so I don’t know a lot about, uh, mining copper, but, uh, apparently, uh, just inside this area is a really good location, keeping it nice and cool at that temperature. So, anyway, this was kind of the source of all the riches and the wealth that came in to the Hukia village, which lasted all the way up until the 1920s. So, uh, anyway, this is it from the Sasaun miner shaft or the copper mine and we’re going to go to our last destination for today. So, we’ll see you later. All right, everybody. And welcome to the Hiro Kane residence. And wow, this looks super super impressive. It’s way up there on top of that hill and it looks like a castle, like a fortress up there with the stone walls. And this is uh where one of the wealthiest families in uh the Hukia village lived. And uh it is open to the public. We can go in and check it out. Looks like they light it up at night as well. But uh this is about three and a half kilometers outside the main uh Hookia city center. And uh yeah, so this family had uh um they they ran the businesses that uh that mined the copper and made the Benada uh pigments. So anyway, let’s go up these stairs, go inside the residence and check it out. So I’ll see you soon. All right. Hello everyone and welcome to the Hitokane residence. I have now climbed up the hill and uh entered the residence here and I’m going to give you a quick tour of it. It is a really nice place, but look at this view here from the top. Just really really beautiful countryside here in Okoyama Prefecture. You can see the rice fields down below. This is we’re getting into the rice planting season here in early May. But beautiful mountains and countryside. And there’s the parking lot down below. And actually, we came in on this road here. And it was really, really narrow and pretty scary. It was actually really scary. And uh that’s how we came in. But I definitely recommend taking this bigger road down here. So, please take that if you’re driving a car. And they also have those little carts where they drive people around. And that would be a very good option to do um if you don’t have a car. So, anyway, let’s take a quick tour here of the Helane residence here. And as you can see, really, really huge house even on modern day standards. So, you can imagine back in those days must have been super super impressive if it’s too impressive in 2025. Very nice uh Japanese garden here. And here, this is an interesting uh it’s like a musical instrument here, but you you pour the water down here onto the rope, onto the rocks, and then the echo comes through this bamboo. You put your ear next to that bamboo, and you can hear it almost sounds like music as the water drips down onto the to the rocks down below. So, very nice Japanese garden here. And then I’ll take you inside the house for a very quick tour to show you what it looks like on the inside. And uh it’s kind of dark in here, so I don’t know how well you’re going to be able to see this in the video, but it does give you kind of a a peak into what life must have been like for the Hiddane family here. So, this is the kitchen area here. This is probably the the dining room, and you can see all the way through to the back the other rooms there. Yeah, this was the uh the shower area here. There’s the bathtub. Quite modern looking. And then just different rooms like this for storing rice. Then there’s uh rooms over here. These were for the workers. I guess this is where they stayed and slept. Kind of simple but nice rooms. Of course, they’ve been very well preserved and it’s very very uh clean. So, uh, anyway, I think this is just basic view here into this really nice house here. A lot of these rooms you cannot enter. You can only view from the outside like this. But, uh, anyway, very, very nice. All right. So, I think this is where I will end the video here. This was a day tour of the uh Hukia village here in Okyama Prefecture in Takahashi City, the Hukia village. So, anyway, do you have anything to say? Yeah. And of course it is Golden Week and it wasn’t very crowded at all. We got around why come to next year. Yes, maybe we can. Maybe we can come here again next year. So anyway, thank you so much for watching. If you like the video, please click like, leave a comment down below, subscribe, and uh I’m making videos like this all over Japan. So again, thank you so much for watching. We’ll see you next time. Bye-bye. It’s funny.
Fukiya Village is located in rural Okayama Prefecture. It was a prosperous village thanks to a local copper mine and the production of bengara color pigment. Today, the village has been well-preserved, and visiting it is like traveling back in time. Join me as I visit this beautiful hidden gem!/ 岡山県高梁市にある、吹屋ふるさと村。ベンガラ生産やその原料であるローハで巨大な富を築いた豪商たちが作り上げた町。赤銅色の石州瓦とベンガラ色の外観で統一された赤い町並み。美しく保存されており、「ジャパンレッド発祥の地」として文化庁の日本遺産に選定されています。さぁ、一緒に歴史を感じながら、この美しい町並みを散策してみよう！
0:00 – Walking through Fukiya Village/ 吹屋ふるさと村の散策
9:53 – Motoyama Yama Shrine/ 本山山神社
11:13 – Former Katayama Residence/ 旧片山家住宅
15:14 – Fukiya Historical Museum/ 吹屋ふるさと郷土館
15:56 – Bengara Factory Museum/ ベンガラ館
18:41 – Sasaune Mine/ 笹畝坑道
20:08 – View of Hirokane Residence/ 広兼邸
20:57 – Tour of Hirokane Residence/ 広兼邸のご案内
25:20 – Farewell message/ ドリューからのメッセージ
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#japan #japantravel #japantrip #okayama #okayamaprefecture #fukiyavillage #bengara #岡山 #岡山県 ＃吹屋＃吹屋ふるさと村＃ベンガラ