Karokuya-En Handcrafted Sea Salt

The Karokuya-En sea salt company is located in Tsuji-island in the Amakusa area in Kumamoto. The local inland sea, ‘Ariake-kai’ is known for aqua farming such as Nori (seaweed), sea salt, clam digging, etc.

Ryota Fukuda started his own salt company in 2020 after training himself at a local sea salt company for over 17 years.

The way Ryota makes the salt is very simple. He built the workshop in front of the ocean so he could directly pull out the sea water with a long hose. Ryota gets scrap wood from the neighboring construction sites, burns the wood and boils the sea water to evaporate for at least four days. After the sea water completely evaporates Ryota’s wife Mami removes the tiny sands and stones by hand and his mother Hatsune does the packaging.