Tsuruga city

Hi, there.

I had a small travel to Tsuruga-city（敦賀市、つるがし）, Fukui prefecture（福井県、ふくいけん）with my sons together. Tsuruga was known as a trading port accessing to mainland China in ancient age.

We first went to the beach named ”Kehi no matsubara” (気比の松原、けひのまつばら). This site is the one of "Big 3 pine beaches in Japan", literally kehi no matsubara has pine forest along its beach. In this year it was still hot even in the middle of October, so I watched those who were swimming in the beach.

Second, we visited the ruin of "Kanagasaki castle"（金ケ崎城、かながさきじょう）. Kanagasaki castle was built in 14th century, and in 16th century (so called "Sengoku period")  Asakura clan（朝倉氏、あさくらし）, the local samurai lord family governed this area and this castle played the important function of their government. Later, Asakura klan fought against Nobunaga Oda（織田信長、おだのぶなが）and in those days Nobunaga Oda was aiming for unification in Japan, but he was betrayed at this site by the army of his sister's husband, Nagamasa Azai（浅井長政、あざいながまさ）while advancing to the territory of Mr. Asakura in 1570. Finally Nobunaga was forced to return to Kyoto, which was the center of Nobunaga's control. s center of control. This battle is known as Siege of Kanegasaki（金ケ崎の戦い、かながさきのたたかい）. Since the site is located in the small mountain with an altitude of 86 meters, many people enjoy hiking there. We also hiked to the top of the mountain and enjoyed watching the panorama from there.   

And third, we went to the beach named "Suisho-hama（水晶浜、すいしょうはま）". This is also a beach, and "Suisho" means crystal. Because it seems that the water is clear and clean like a crystal, so it is called "Suisho-hama", I suppose. This beach doesn't belong to Tsuruga, but it is very close to Tsuruga city, we could drive there from the city within only 10minutes. I heard that many Brazilians often visit this beach, we found some foreign visitors there, I suppose they are Brazilians or the other Latin Americans maybe.

By the way, I could find out the nuclear power plant on the opposite bank. This is named "Mihama nuclear power plant（美浜原子力発電所、みはまげんしりょくはつでんしょ）".