Jason Panuelos | The Dapper Drone: Fukuoka 2018 Part 3

On our third day in Fukuoka, we visited Nokonoshima which is an island you can reach by ferry from Fukuoka.

Started the day with a quick visit to the market in Tenjin! Manu Coffee can be found here which is where we were headed for some morning coffee.

This was also my first time at a Japanese market which was a lovely experience!

Everything is mostly uncooked but they all already look so good. The quality of produce in Japan is just next-level.

You can also find stores that sell treats such as mochi!

Tofu and dumplings~

You can also find actual restaurants that you can dine in! Now that I think about it, I wish we tried eating here while we were there.

And of course, you can find sashimi cuts! I honestly really wanted to try this Fatty Tuna as I hear it literally melts in the mouth and is so flavorful! Unfortunately though, I wasn't able to try Fatty Tuna. But my dad did however buy Whale Sashimi which was crazy. (Sorry to all the whales) It was delicious though and quite an interesting experience. Though, I would probably rather try Fatty Tuna than eat a whale again...

At one of the exits of the market is Manu Coffee! It's been talked about online a lot so we decided to try it.

They have a gorgeous seating area upstairs that makes all the quaint cafes out there look so bad. It's so pretty here!

I ordered the Honey Cinnamon Latte because I've been so obsessed with coffee and cinnamon lately. Of course, I enjoyed it but it wasn't anything that made me jump out of my chair. I would honestly return for the beautiful space though.

Afterwards, we took the bus to the Meinohama Ferry Terminal.

A tricky thing about the ferries to Nokonoshima is that it only comes every hour so you have to be strict with the time on this visit unless you're okay with waiting a whole other hour when you miss the ferry.

The ride itself is about 10 minutes and then you'll be in the beautiful island of Nokonoshima! From the port area, you will immediately see the bus stop that'll take you up to the actual garden. Like the ferry, the bus also follows an hourly schedule so plan your trips accordingly once again! The ride up can be taxing if you end up standing during the ride. The many twists and turns can be exhausting.

When you reach the top and enter the garden though, it's a totally different story!

I honestly can't think of a better place to visit than Nokonoshima during the spring. Though I hear Ohori Park is also amazing. (We didn't get to visit Ohori though)

If you come from a tropical third world country like me, it's almost surreal experiencing true spring scenery such as this. I've always just grown up seeing this on TV but now that I was experiencing it, it was so amazing and so unreal.

You can really see everywhere how happy the locals are to be able to play comfortably outside.

Nokonoshima is an incredibly large park, and you wouldn't even realize how much time and ground you've covered because of the endless scenery.

For lunch, we had Yakiniku in the park! It's not the most affordable meal, but the quality - as expected - is topnotch. The six of us shared a meal package but I feel that four people would be better to share this package.