The Wife and I decided to travel a bit further than usual on Saturday as we made our way to Nokonoshima Island, an island located only ten minutes by ferry from Meinohama.
But first, to get to said ferry terminal, you need to take the following buses from Fukuoka city:
From Tenjin: Bus Number 300, 301, 302, 304
From Hakata: Bus Number 312 from Hakata Bus Station or 300, 301, 302, 304 from Hakataekimae (A) bus stop
Once you reach the ferry terminal you can purchase a ticket for Nokonoshima Island. The 2 way ferry fare is 460 yen, which translates to about SGD$5. Alternatively, you could charter a sea taxi which would set you back about 500 yen per trip, so 2 way fare would be 1000 yen. For those of you who suffer from seasickness rest assured your torture will be brief, as you can literally see the island from the mainland and the whole journey takes 10 to 15 minutes at most.
Note however that once you reach the island your travelling is not done yet. You need to take a bus from the Nokonoshima Island to Nokonoshima Island Park which is located at the northern tip of the island. Incidentally the Island Park isn’t the only thing on the island, as shown by below map:
The bus fare from the Nokonoshima ferry terminal to the island park costs 230 yen. Once you reach the park you can purchase your tickets for entrance which will set you back 1000 yen if you are an adult, 500 yen if you are an elementary or junior high student and 300 yen for infants aged 3 and above.
Once the logistics are out of the way you can settle back and finally enjoy Nokonoshima Island Park, a sprawling beautiful park:
This is the vista that greeted us as soon as we entered the park. It was beautiful and serene and we simply loved the atmosphere. There was a nearby field to the entrance where many Japanese were simply taking a nap in the nice warm sun serenaded by a lovely wind from the sea. There were also plenty of families who were doing picnics and I must say that this is definitely the perfect place for picnics or bento lunches.
There were even some old ladies nearby who were selling assorted food products and snacks. Whatever you do though, don’t order the thing that looks like orange juice. That’s probably natsu mikan juice which I found out to my horror. That stuff is really difficuly to gulp down despite the old lady assuring me it was “oishi”!
Anyway, by the time we got there it was about lunch time. So we proceeded to look for a suitable spot for us to park ourselves while we enjoyed the bento lunch we had bought at the Nokonoshima ferry earlier. We found this beautiful view in front of a patch of flowers facing the sea:
There was even a bench under a shady tree and we proceeded to enjoy our lunch, the view and the cooling sea breeze. If nothing else, the ambience and view were certainly 5 star restaurant worthy. The only drawback of course was the fact that it was near the petting zoo. That’s right. Nokonoshima has a petting zoo where your kids can play with the animals:
There are goats and rabbits which you can feed and play with. Thankfully from where we were seated we couldn’t smell them and it didn’t really hurt that 5 star ambience I was talking about earlier.
After our meal we proceeded to explore the park. It was really interesting to see that the Japanese were basically playing games of catch or various other racquet sports here. If you were in Singapore, you wouldn’t be playing catch in a park you paid SGD12 to enter. 😛
 
You could even try your hand at walking on stilts if you so desired, all for the price of 100 yen for 30 minutes. There were other activities you could try as well that were clearly more family oriented including a mini golf course.
Anyway as we explored the park further we came across this interesting small hamlet of sorts. The houses and decor of this area of the park had a clearly vintage look and feel and certainly added to the whole atmosphere.
The first shop we came across in this hamlet sold traditional Japanese toys and other cute knick knacks which you could buy as souveniers. The toys and items sold was certainly interesting:
If you have a hankering for traditional Japanese toys, you could do much worse than visiting this shop.
Nearby, there was a small cosy little cafe:
It certainly looked cute and inviting to us so we decided to drop by and enjoy a cup of coffee The decor inside the cafe was cosy and nice too:
And this is what we ordered, coffee and a doughnut:
Overall the cafe offered a nice break to recharge and reenergize yourself before continuing on your exploration of the park. I do wish the food and variety of food on offer were better though, as it was really a shame that the decor and environment were let down by the food.
Further down the road there were other interesting shops and restaurants. What caught our eye though was this unique little establishment that sold pottery:
I can’t really appreciate their beauty as I have no eye for art but The Wife tells me that the colours are beautiful and they were well made. Even more interesting however was the fact that they offered lessons to those who were interested. You could learn how to make pottery from the masters of the shop. This does bring to mind Patrick Swayze’s scene in Ghost. Maybe you would want to bring your wife or girlfriend here and reenact this scene?
Anyway to make simple mugs, cups or smaller items it costs 2200 yen, which works out to about SGD25. For bigger bowls or pieces it costs 2500 yen. The sign claims even 5 to 6 year olds can make their own pieces and may be something interesting for your child to try. There are two available sessions. 1st session is from 10:00AM-12:30PM and 2nd session is from 1:00PM to 4:30PM.
Once you are past this collection of cute shops you finally come to the main point of Nishinomiya Park (at least to me), the flowers! They were certainly a sight to behold. In October the park is full of cosmos flowers. The cosmos flowers were brilliantly colourful against a backdrop of the sea. In front of the flower field there was even a BBQ area and park for people to picnic or simply take a nap. Here are some of the photos we took of the flower field:
 
You could probably just sit there and enjoy the view and the nice ocean sea breeze for hours. In addition to the flowers we got lucky and spotted something that was really exciting for us clueless city folk. See if you can spot it in the picture below:
Well its probably difficult for you to find it given we had a really hard time capturing the little fella on film. Its a hummingbird. At first we thought it was a bee. Look carefully he’s in the middle of the picture. He was a bit too fast though and its not as clear as we would like, but this was certainly an unexpected find.
After that we decided to make our way home as it was getting chilly. There was supposed to be a light up of the cosmos at night but we decided to skip that. I surmised it was simply flowers lit up by lights at night and decided the flowers by day were enough for us. I guess what we got instead was this light up by Mother Nature on our way back:
Overall, Nokonoshima Island Park was a really great weekend getaway, definitely a great place to go if you live in Fukuoka, but probably not a tourism destination. It seemed more tranquil and local in flavor, perfect if you are a local, underwhelming if you are a tourist. You could spend half a day here, just relaxing and taking your time. Or you could probably finish the whole park within 2-3 hours if you were so inclined.
Would we go there again? Definitely, especially given you get different flowers in different seasons.
Just from the list above we will probably be back for the hydrangeas, the fall foliage, the plum blossoms and the sunflowers. Have to say the park really knows how to maximize their income. Singapore Gardens By The Bay should take note!
Mantaiko in Fukuoka 