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Fukui Live Cameras in Japan — 13 official webcams

Eleven live streams of the towns and station fronts of Fukui - six news cameras from a local broadcaster and five put up by the taxi association - covering the prefecture from the north down to the coast of Wakasa Bay.

What you can see

Eleven of the thirteen are live video, from two operators. FBC Fukui Broadcasting streams six of the news cameras it uses on air, and the Fukui Prefecture Taxi Association streams five cameras at station taxi ranks.

The broadcaster's six are spread across the prefecture. Three are in Fukui city: Daimyocho crossing, where a tram line runs through; near Fukui station, looking down on the river that crosses the centre; and Owada, where the shinkansen viaduct runs beside rice fields. The others are Ono, with a castle on the ridge above the town, Echizen on the fishing coast, and Obama on Wakasa Bay.

The taxi association's five line up the station fronts along the extended shinkansen route: Fukui Station East, Tsuruga Station West, Awara-Onsen Station (the plaza and the local-line platform, two cameras) and Echizen-Takefu Station. They exist so that people can see whether a cab is waiting, which is why each frames the whole plaza.

The remaining two are the Ministry of the Environment's Lake Mikata and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's Kuzuryu and Hino rivers. Lake Mikata is one of the Mikata Five Lakes, an unusual place where lakes of different character - fresh through to brackish - sit side by side.

13 cameras in Fukui

12 video, 1 still. Tap one to open it in the camera list.

When to watch

The town cameras work well as a way of checking the weather. Fukui spends its winters under snow and leaden skies, and on the same day Ono in the north can be white while Obama on the coast is merely wet. Open the six together and the difference is immediate.

The five station cameras follow the timetable. People and cars gather just after a limited express or a shinkansen arrives, then thin out again. Awara-Onsen Station (local platform) reaches down to the platform below the station building, so trains themselves come to a stop in the frame.

Lake Mikata gathers waterbirds in winter: arrival around October, peak numbers from December to February, departure north in March. The Kuzuryu and Hino camera is there for water levels, and levels rise easily in early spring as the snow goes. Note that these systems come under load exactly when flooding is worst, so there is a case for staying off them and leaving capacity to the people who need them.

Closer looks at cameras here

Agencies publishing the cameras on this page

The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.

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