The Suzuki Sake Brewery used to operate a sake brewery in Namie Town's Ukedo district, this building was located steps from the sea and was physically destroyed by the tsunami wave. This left the owner of the brewery without a home or a livelihood.
They managed to evacuate with the necessities of the brewery and after the disaster, the brewery was moved to Nagai City to the mountains of Yamagata Prefecture in October 2011 (the same year as the earthquake). Since then, they’ve continued to brew sake with the hope of preserving the traditional sake brewing techniques that had been developed by generations of brewers in Namie Town.
Finally, on March 20, 2021, the brewery was able to return to its hometown of Namie with the opening of a new brewery at the Namie Roadside Station. Here, visitors can watch the Suzuki brewers at work making their delicious sake. They even use locally grown rice to make some of their sake, with a focus on maintaining their hometown flavor.
At the Namie Roadside Station, you can visit the sake brewery and taste their freshly brewed sake. For visitors who don't drink sake, there is also a sake flavored soft serve ice cream that is absolutely delicious. The soft serve comes in a traditional wooden sake cup!
| Website | https://michinoeki-namie.jp/info/ |
|---|---|
| Best Season | All Year |
| Opening Hours | 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM |
| Parking | Free |
| Entrance Fee | Free |
| Access | Chimeiji Kiyohashi, Namie, Futaba District, Fukushima 979-1513 View directions |
|---|---|
| Getting there | By Car: 8 min from the Namie I.C. exit off the Joban Expressway. By Train: 15 min walk from Namie Station on the JR Joban Line. |
Wonder Farm, which covers the same area as 3.5 football pitches, includes a local products shop, restaurant, BBQ site, and tomato-picking experience!Mori no Kitchen (the restaurant inside Wonder Farm) is stylish, comfortable, and serves great food. The delicious pizzas and tomato curries are particularly popular!
Pick your own strawberries at one of the 11 farms within walking distance of the Wada Strawberry Tourism Association office. Strawberry picking season is from December to mid-May. Visit Wada Strawberry Tourism Association during this time to take part in an all-you-can-eat 30 minute strawberry picking experience!
Kunitama Shrine (國魂神社) is located in Iwaki City, in the coastal area of Fukushima. Three deities are enshrined at Kunitama Shrine: Okuninushi (the god of nation-building, said to be the founder of Japan); Suserihime-no-Mikoto (the wife of Okuninushi) and Shohikono. The shrine is said to have been built in the year 806, and was renovated in 1942. The temple bell was designated as a tangible cultural property of the city of Iwaki in 1982. There is also a preserved cedar tree.Several events are celebrated in the shrine, such as a New Year’s Day Festival, a Rice Planting Festival, and other prayer festivals. During the summer, the shrine is beautifully decorated with colorful wind chimes. Photos: Iwaki Tourism & Community Development Bureau (一社)いわき観光まちづくりビューロー
This museum, located in sunny Iwaki City, exhibits the moving calligraphy of Shoko Kanazawa. The whole museum has been constructed while keeping in mind traditional Japanese architectural styles. As well as the calligraphy exhibition, Shoko Kanazawa Art Museum also has a Japanese tea room café on site, where you can take a rest with beautiful Japanese garden viewing. The same building also houses a kimono exhibition, while features one of the world's biggest kimono!
Café Amazon Kawauchi is a modern cafe and restaurant located only 350 meters away from the Tenzan Bunko Museum. Café Amazon has over 1500 restaurants abroad, and serves Asian food and coffee.This was the first Café Amazon restaurant in Japan, opened to help reinvigorate Kawauchi, attract visitors and, of course, serve delicious Thai dishes!In 2016, following extensive revitalization efforts, all restrictions were lifted in Kawauchi village, which had had to be evacuated in 2011 following the nuclear accident. Kawauchi is now is a quiet, green village surrounded by mountains and streams, home to a few thousand people.But because the village had remained uninhabited for some time, the only coffee shop there had closed, and, left without a local hub, it seemed difficult for the community to rekindle—that’s when Thai restaurant chain Café Amazon stepped in.Café Amazon Kawauchi has a warm and light wooden interior (built using wood from Fukushima!), as well as a piano and guitar you can play freely. You can sit indoors or outdoors on a wooden deck.Café Amazon Kawauchi isn’t only a coffee shop, it’s a fundamental part of the reconstruction of Kawauchi village, a meeting place for both locals and visitors.
Sedette Kashima [せでってかしま] is a service area in Minamisoma City, in the coastal area of Fukushima prefecture.The name of the facility derives from an expression in the local dialect, which could be roughly translated as “Bring me with you!”. At the entrance, the service area has life-size replicas of Soma Nomaoi participants riding horses, and monitors showing photos of the festival. There is a souvenir shop and a dining hall, places for drivers to rest, as well as a play area for children and a dog park.At Sedette Kashima, you’ll find plenty of local crafts, souvenirs and traditional items from Minamisoma.Sedette Kashima can be accessed using non-toll (local) roads.
At Iwaki's Tourism and Products Center, visitors can purchase products and specialties from Iwaki as well as enjoy eating local produce. The Tourism and Products Center also introduces visitors to Iwaki City's local history and culture.The Lalamew complex includes 7 fish shops, 15 gift shops, and 12 eating and drinking establishments. The fish shops have the feel of an open-air market, and visitors can bargain for seafood direct from the port.Please enjoy dining in the establishments that present to you an abundance of seasonal seafood.
Full House is a stylish bookstore and cafe run by the critically-acclaimed novelist Yu Miri. It is located near the JR Odaka Station in Minamisoma City, in the coastal area of Fukushima prefecture.Full House is located on the ground floor of a refurbished house. The interior is wooden and elegant, and there is a selection of books in Japanese chosen by the author. The cafe serves meals like pasta and doria, as well as desserts and drinks with seasonal options.Yu Miri is famously known for her novel Tokyo Ueno Station (translated into English by Morgan Giles), which won the U.S. National Book Award in the Translated Literature category in 2019.Following 3.11, Ms. Miri has worked extensively to communicate the stories of residents of evacuated towns and villages in Fukushima’s coastal area, and has been living in Minamisoma City since 2015.When Ms. Miri moved to Minamisoma, there were no other bookstores open in the area —the few bookstores that had been there before 3.11 had closed following the evacuation—, so she decided to open her own in 2018, and named it ‘Full House’ after one of her novels.But something was missing. She quickly realized that people who traveled all the way to visit the store wanted to sit down with a warm drink, and there weren’t many restaurants or cafes nearby yet, so she decided to turn Full House into a book cafe the following year.Today, Full House is a lively and cozy hub where locals and visitors can bond over their love of coffee and literature.