Kawachi fuji garden (河内藤 園) ~ A Secret Garden in 北九州 (Kita-kyushu)

This is a 3 weeks late post. I've been caught up by my 'soon to be publish' paper, some new research project and a couples of academic conference right as soon as I finished my Golden Week vacation.

My friend and I had planned this trip since January, we wanted to visit the 河内藤

園(Kawachi fuji garden) in kita-kyushu to see the Wisteria tunnel. We saw the photo from the internet, it was beautiful. the flowers only bloom from mid-April to mid-May, Since my friend had to go back to Indonesia at may 11th, We decided to go to this garden during Golden Week.

We took a night bus for we both never experience it before but the most important thing is because it's the cheapest mode of transportation to go to kita-kyushu. We left Osaka at 22.00 on May 5th, the bus was very comfortable that we fell asleep immediately. We arrived around 7.15AM at Kokura station. If you go by shinkansen you need to get off at this station too. from kokura station take JR train to Yahata station It takes around 15-20 minutes to go to yahata from kokura. from yahata station there is a free shuttle bus to the garden. the shuttle bus goes to Ajisai onsen near the garden, from the onsen it'll only take 10 minutes walk to see the wisteria.

So here goes the silly part of this trip. As I mentioned there is a shuttle bus to the garden, but you can go to the garden with city bus too, you have to pay 240 yen. Since the shuttle bus is crowded wit local and some Chinese tourists, we didn't want to be cramped in a small bus with them so we decided to take the city bus. it turned out that the city bus stop 7 KM away from the garden and what we didn't know is that the garden located at a mountain, so yeah we have to walk (with a little bit of climbing) around 1 hour to reach the garden. That Long?..Actually if you walk fast and not distracted by the view you can get to the gaden by 30 mins. But it wasn't a mistake at all taking the city bus, since on our way to the garden there is this Kawachi reservoir, this a big lake  surrounded by the green hills.

 View along the sidewalk to the garden

 Kawachi reservoir

Kawachi reservoir

After 1 hour of walking we finally arrived at the kawachi fuji garden. Since it was golden week there were so many tourists and the admission fee were expensive too, we have to pay 1000 yen. 

Inside the garden, the view just beautiful not to mention the flowers smells good too, but be careful with bees. There were a lot of bees flying around inside the tunnel. the tunnel is about 500 M (not so sure if it's correct) and consist of not only the purple wisteria but also the white, pink and light purple color flowers.  Since it was crowded with many peoples taking a good photos were not easy. I made promise to come again next year during weekdays so I can get a good photos.

The wisteria tunnel

purple color wisteria is the main flowers

in this garden

The pink colour wisteria

The wisteria tunnel as seen from outside

We left the garden at 2PM, before going to hakata city we paid a visit to the kokura-castle. It is a small castle 5 minutes walk from JR nishi-kokura station. After that we walked around 20 minutes to kokura station, then took shinkansen to Hakata then check in to the our hotel.

Kokura castle

Honestly 1 day was not enough to explore kita-kyushu. There were so many places I wanted to see. I will surely comeback and visit again next year. And next year I will save more money so I can take shinkansen/airplane to Kyushu. despite the bus was comfort enough, still I want to sleep and rest well at night. 

continued on next post....