Niigata Furumachi 古町

The best way to move around Niigata city is by their sightseeing bus, which stops at popular tourist spots in downtown Niigata. A 1 day pass cost JPY500 with unlimited rides on the bus. 




Furumachi (古町) meaning 'old town' in Japanese is a shopping street lined with shops and stalls at both sides of the streets. 

You can find a variety of stores selling various types of local produce along Furumachi.

The store sells various pickled vegetables or what we call "Tsukemono" in Japanese. 

The fresh vegetables are very cheap! A big bunch of Niigata leek only sells for JPY120 (SGD2) !! And the daikon at JPY150 ? It's such a big daikon!

This store sells dried vegetables. Do you know what is the dried stuff beside the dried chilli ? We took a long time to figure it out too! It's actually dried daikon. They call it Kiriboshi Daikon, literally meaning cut dried daikon. It is normally blanched in boiling water can be used in a variety of dishes. 

Dried salmon is also a popular item in Niigata. Whole salmon is preserved in salt and hung up to dry during winter. 

Some dried salmon specialty stores have the customer's name and price of the salmon attached to the fish. A average sized dried salmon sells for approximately JPY7000 (SGD100).  

Another local specialty of Niigata is the Sasadango. Sasa - meaning bamboo leaves in Japanese and dango meaning mochi balls. Sasadango - a glutinous rice flavoured with mugwort, filled with red bean paste wrapped in bamboo leaves. 

Besides red bean filling, there are also other fillings, such as salty filling - Japanese kelp, kinpira or the gold award winning white bean filling sasadango. 


A copy of the sightseeing bus route can be downloaded here