Yame: Hiking, Tea, and Culture

Yame can be explored for trip planning through several specific themes: a designated hiking course, tea cultivation, and cultural heritage. If you are looking for a hotel in Yame, you can first decide whether your trip will focus more on the course, tea and scenery, or culture and crafts. The following information sets out these themes.

Plan your hike and return journey

The Kyushu Olle Yame Course is 11 kilometers long. It begins at Yamanoi Park and ends at the Iwatoyama History and Culture Exchange Center. Along the way, it passes, among other places, Dōnanzan Kofun and Yame Central Tea Plantation. Its start, finish, and waypoints give the route a clearly defined course. This lets you visit the mentioned stops as part of a continuous trail.

From the end of the course, visitors can take a Nishitetsu bus to Fukushima and then a Horikawa bus back to the starting point. Check bus connections for both legs before your hike. This allows you to factor the return journey via Fukushima into your plans.

Tea plantations, a café, and tea culture

Yame Central Tea Plantation covers about 70 hectares and is a major growing area for Yame tea. At the “Green Monster” observation café at the plantation, visitors can enjoy Yame tea and soft-serve ice cream made with Yame tea while looking out over the tea fields. As operations may change, check the café’s latest information before visiting.

The Tea Culture Museum in Hoshino Village, in Yame City, offers a different tea experience. Visitors can make matcha using a stone mill and prepare hand-rolled green tea there. Traditional Yame hon-gyokuro is also served as shizuku tea; check the latest service details in advance. Also check whether the hands-on activities you want are available. The plantation combines tea cultivation with views of the fields and a café, while Hoshino focuses on preparation and serving methods.

Culture and crafts

Yame Fukushima lantern dolls have been preserved and passed down by local residents for about 280 years. They reflect Yame’s landscape and history. Yame Park is located in the center of Yame on the site of the former Fukushima Castle.

At the Yame Handmade Paper Museum, you can learn about Yame handmade paper and experience it firsthand. The museum is next to the Yame Traditional Craft Museum. The lantern dolls represent a culture passed down through generations, while the paper museum focuses on hands-on experience of a craft.

Scenery in the wider natural park

Yabe River Prefectural Natural Park covers areas in the cities of Yame, Chikugo, Miyama, and Ōmuta. It is characterized by the Yabe River and the area around Ryōganji, known for its unusual rock formations. Tea plantations and mountain village landscapes are also among its features. The natural park thus offers a broader landscape scale than the Kyushu Olle Course: the course is a named route with a start and finish, while the park covers areas in several cities.

Yame tea soba

The history of Yame tea soba also adds a culinary perspective to the tea-related themes. Yame City, the Chamber of Commerce, and the tourism association developed the product to mark 600 years of tea cultivation in Yame.

Discover more destinations: Tagawa District, Ukiha, Munakata, Ogōri, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, Hisayama, Iizuka.

For the overall travel guide: Fukuoka Prefecture.