We arrived in the town of Matsushima one cloudy/rainy day after catching a boat over from nearby Hon-Shiogama. Getting a boat cruise around the bay is one of the best ways to get a close look at many of the pine tree-covered islands Matsushima is famous for.
From the mainland you can get even more up-close and personal with a few of the islands as you can actually walk around on them!
One of these islands is known as Fukuura Island and is connected to the mainland by a 250 meter long red bridge. The entrance to the island is located about 500 meters east of the Matsushima boat port and about 1,000 meters east of the Matsushima-Kaigan train station. Since Fukuura Island is the eastern most main attraction in Matsushima, our intention was to start there and then work our way back to the train station, visiting the other attractions along the way.
So, after disembarking from our boat we turned right and walked along the main street which was lined with many interesting looking shops—we'll check them out on the way back. After about 150 meters we passed Godaido (which is another island) and turned right- taking a shortcut through a car park. We followed the car park along the ocean and past a big hotel, before arriving at a building connected to the Fukuura Bridge, about five minutes later.
The building serves to control access to the island and is where you pay the 200 yen toll it costs to cross. Inside we found that while there was an attendant, we had to actually buy the ticket to cross from a vending machine. Also, I should point out that you only need to pay the toll one way, so you won’t be trapped on the island if you run out of money!
Crossing the bridge was fun as it was a nice shade of red and quite long. Once we reached the other side we found a map which showed the island's many crisscrossing paths, as well as a few attractions, marked in. Since it had stopped raining for the meantime we decided to explore and had an enjoyable time strolling around the lush island. Since everything was a little wet from the rain it actually added to the ambience and wasn’t a damper at all.
At one point we some came across some pink, tall pretty cosmos flowers which were actually marked on the various maps located around the island. While we were admiring the flowers, what looked to be a large butterfly or wasp started flying around and, after a closer inspection it looked to be a humming bird!
Unfortunately though, apparently there are no humming birds in Japan. Further research revealed that what we saw was likely a Hummingbird Moth. No wonder I was mistaken!
It was still pretty cool though.
After we had spent about forty minutes exploring island, the rain started up again and, while we had umbrellas, we decided that it was time to cross back over the bridge and head back to the mainland. See more great photos of Fukuurajima here!
