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The Rivers of Fukuoka and Saga: 7 Live Cameras in Japan

Seven live streams the Japanese government runs on the rivers of northern Kyushu — the Chikugo, the Onga, the Yamakuni, the Matsuura, the Yabe, the Rokkaku and the Kase.

What you can see

Four of the seven — Chikugo, Yabe, Rokkaku and Kase — drain into the Ariake Sea, which has the largest tidal range in Japan: around six metres at spring tides. That reach runs well inland, so the downstream cameras show the water rising and falling over a day with no rain at all. On a strong flood tide the current can even reverse.

The Rokkaku is the extreme case. Its gradient is so slight that the tide pushes far upstream — you can watch muddy water travelling inland, which is tide, not flood. The same flatness means that in heavy rain the water cannot get out to sea, and the basin floods widely.

The Chikugo is the largest river in Kyushu and has long been called a wild one. In the July 2017 downpour the valleys of its tributaries collapsed in concentrated failures. The Yabe rises in the tea country of Yame; weirs and sluice gates are everywhere along it, and you can see water being deliberately shared out.

The other three go to different seas. The Onga runs through the old Chikuho coal towns to the Hibiki Sea, the Yamakuni cuts the rock spires of Yabakei on its way to the Suo Sea, and the Matsuura crosses the Karatsu plain to the Genkai Sea. The Yamakuni has the biggest contrast on this page: gorge upstream, open plain below.

All seven are rotating streams — one feed cycles through several points along the river, so you may wait a little for the spot you want. The regional bureaus label all of them as test broadcasts.

Cameras you can watch now: 7

All 7 are live video. Tap one to open it in the camera list.

When to watch

These matter in the rainy season and in typhoons. Late June into July is when stationary rain bands park over this region, and the water comes up valley by valley. The same rain behaves completely differently on the steep Yamakuni and on the flat Rokkaku. Open them side by side and the difference is the picture.

Note that the worse the weather, the darker the image and the more rain smears the lens. Do not expect too much of the view, and take evacuation decisions from your local authority, not from a camera.

On a calm day, the thing to watch is the tide. On the Ariake rivers, low water exposes mud and the channel visibly narrows. Look up the tide times, then open the same camera twice six hours apart — it does not look like the same place.

In autumn the flats along the Kase become the ground for a hot-air balloon competition, and a wide expanse of grass appears.

If it isn't showing

All seven are rotating streams that cycle through several cameras along the river. You wait for the point you want, and the order is not yours to choose. At night it is dark, and rough weather smears the picture.

Four of the seven are on the Fukuoka page and three on Saga. The Chikugo runs through Fukuoka, Saga and Oita, but each river is counted under the first prefecture listed for it, so it does not appear on the Oita page.

The seven end in four different seas: the Onga in the Hibiki Sea, the Yamakuni in the Suo Sea, the Matsuura in the Genkai Sea and the other four in the Ariake Sea. The tidal range on the Ariake is large, and on a river like the Rokkaku you can watch muddy water move upstream. The other rivers of Kyushu are on The Rivers of Kumamoto and Nagasaki, The Rivers of Oita and Rivers of Miyazaki and Kagoshima.

Where to find The Rivers of Fukuoka and Saga

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.

To find other cameras, go to the camera list. You can narrow the cameras by format, region, subject and provider.