I recently returned from a 12 day trip, mostly focused on a road-trip driving from Tokyo to Ise-shima national park and back. Like others have mentioned here, you do not need to drive if you plan to stay within the major cities and I do not recommend car rental if that is your plan.
**Context:**
2 people in our late 20s, 4th time visiting Japan. My wife is just about fluent enough to communicate most of the time and can read ok. Since we’ve been to most of the more touristy places from previous trips, our goal this time was to get out of the city and drive along the bay of Ise to visit Ise-Jingu. We also like to collect goshuins and ended up going to a bunch of shrines.
One of our favourite activities is staying at Minshukus which are a type of traditional guesthouses. These locations are usually fairly budget friendly with prices in the 10000 to 15000Y per person per night, and comes with extremely elaborate dinners. The rooms are traditional Japanese style with tatami mats, and they often have shared washrooms and bath facilities. They’re also usually family-operated and staff interactions are very friendly and personable. Since we can communicate a little bit, inn employees are often genuinely interested in talking to us and are always surprised to hear how far we came.
**Driving:**
We’re from Canada which is left-hand drive. The adjustment to the other side of the road actually happens really quickly and it feels natural after about an hour, but I did keep hitting the wipers instead of the turn signal once in a while. If you are considering driving in Japan, please don’t be intimidated. If you drive regularly at home, you really won’t have much issue adjusting. People on the road are generally very courteous with very little cutting in or weaving through traffic, but everyone speeds similarly to NA.
We each only brought a small rolling suitcase and a backpack as luggage so we fit comfortably in a kei car with plenty of room to spare. These little cars are easy to drive on the narrow local roads and also benefit from cheaper toll prices. They’re also cheap to rent and I paid only 2000Y per day for the car from Eco car rental in Odawara. We opted for the additional optional insurance which was 3000Y per driver. This means our rental only set us back 20000Y total, less than the price of a round-trip shinkansen ticket to Nagoya for one person.
I noticed a lot of people enjoy wandering around different neighbourhoods when visiting the city to take in the sights, and driving around is actually very similar. Whether on a small road in the countryside or taking the expressway, there’s always something interesting see. Highway rest-stops are very clean and well-serviced and have a lot of character.
**Trip Report:**
**Day 0.**
Arrived in Narita in the evening, took the Skyliner to our hotel in Nippori. Dinner at a monja/okonomiyaki place called Konaya near our hotel.
**Day 1.**
Went to Starbucks reserve first thing and decided that 10 am was late enough for an espresso martini flight .Took the bus down to the parasite museum which was free and honestly really good. Got a goshuin at Otori-jinja near the museum then headed to Tokyo Tower. Got a goshuin at Zojo-ji then went home early to beat the rush hour squeeze. Got dinner at an izakaya near Tabata station called mostuyaki tatsuya.
**Day 2.**
Checked out and took the Odakyu romancecar to Odawara to pick up our rental. Took the toll-free route towards Omaezaki where our hotel was. Got lunch in Numazu at Fish Dining Hiro and had a great tuna cutlet bowl. Stayed at Minshuku Seika at the tip of Omaezaki which was fantastic and had an enormous seafood dinner.
**Day 3.**
Checked out at 9 am and climbed up to the nearby lighthouse which had a great morning view of the ocean which we took in while drinking some hot canned coffee. Drove through the tea fields in the mountain passes towards Kakegawa and stopped by at Tecchan chakobo to buy some tea. The shop wasn’t open yet but the owner was working in their tea field and saw us trying to go in so they opened the shop, and the super old lady made us some fresh tea and gave us snacks while we decided what to get.
Next we drove to Kakegawa kachoen bird park which was very fun but crowded. Stayed ~1.5hrs then drove towards Minamichita where our next hotel was. We wanted to visit Toyohama fish market where a Japanese youtuber we like works at (his channel is weird fish dude) and we were hoping to meet him there. Arrived at ~3pm but he wasn’t there so we resolved to come back again tomorrow. We parked our car at Morozaki ferry terminal and took a very scenic ferry ride to Himakajima where our next hotel was. Walked around the island a bit then headed towards our hotel Minshuku Maruyo where we had a delicious tiger fugu dinner.
**Day 4.**
Weather turned rainy so we cancelled our original plans to bike around the island and instead took the 10am ferry back to Morosaki after grabbing a goshuin from a local shrine. Took a walk around hazu-misaki and got another goshuin at hazu-shrine which is apparently associated with SKE48. Drove back to Toyohama fish market and this time successfully met the youtuber and had a nice interaction and gave him some snacks we brought from Canada.
Drove to Iwayaji for a goshuin and to see the pagoda, and the shrine lady directed us towards their hina doll display which we really enjoyed (hina doll of girls playing mobile games on their phones were my favourite lol). Got lunch at Uotaro hamayaki BBQ which was a fantastic do-it-yourself bbq restaurant near the coast and had a great lunch there.
The weather was getting really rainy so we decided to cancel the rest of our activities and head to the hotel early. Drove to Matsusaka and checked in at Konishya Inn. This one is probably our favourite hotel during the trip. The main reason to visit Matsusaka is the beef, and if you want to eat matsusaka sukiyaki at a nice restaurant it would go at least 10 000Y in price or higher. This place was 15 400Y per night and came with a Matsusaka beef sukiyaki course that also included ise-ebi sashimi, blue crab, and other side dishes. In the morning, they brought out an extra steak for some reason which and everything was incredible. The sukiyaki was cooked by the elderly okami-san who was very nice as well. But yeah I really recommend staying here if you plan to visit matsusaka.
**Day 5.**
After checking out, we first visited nearly Okadera and got the final goshuin. Our plan was to drive to Ibutaji for their famous mountain hike, but was met with construction deep in the mountain and the person said we would have to go around the mountain which would be a 2hrs of detour. We decided to instead head directly to Ise-jinju instead and visited both Geku and Naiku and got a new goshuincho there. We then visited the Meoto Iwa rocks and got 2 more goshuins along the walking path. Got to our hotel Ajisai no Yado Ohamaso in Toba and enjoyed another great dinner.
**Day 6.**
We went straight to Toba aquarium and it was much larger and better than I thought it would be. The standouts for me were the octopus and ray petting zoo area and the walrus show. They had back-to-back animal shows throughout the day, but we didn’t have time to see a second one. Ended up staying for 3hrs and we wanted to stay longer but I had a booking so we had to leave. We drove down the scenic pearl road to Shimacho Wagu at the southern side of Ago bay. Ago bay is well-known as the birthplace of modern pearl culturing, and I booked a pearl extraction experience at Shinju no Sato.
We were the only people doing the experience and it was directly on the guy’s farm. I really recommend it if you ever go to this area, he showed us around the floating platforms and explained the pearl cultivation process. The guy also spoke english pretty well so that was helpful to me. He took a rack of Akoya oysters and wished us luck and we each opened one to extract a pearl. After cleaning the slime and polishing he drilled a hole into the pearls and helped us assemble it into a pendant fitting and added a necklace chain. We also got to eat the oysters we opened after as sashimi which were a real treat.
We drove to our ryokan in Osatsu called Nagaoka and had another incredible dinner. The area is also known for women free-divers called Ama, who still gather seafood in this traditional manner. The lady that runs the inn is one such diver and she said that we were not in diving season, but the seaweed used in the soup was free-dive harvested by her last season which was cool.
######Side note:
When I was researching where to book I saw that there were several locations directly in the surrounding cities like Toba. The info on these locations did not involve the cleaning and polishing process that the pearl farms described, so I asked the farm guy about this and he said that most of those places just put pearls into dead oysters for you to extract. It’s real pearls and real oysters so it’s a comparable experience, but if you plan on doing it, I highly recommend directly reaching out to a pearl farm to do the experience.
**Day 7.**
This was a 5h driving day back towardsTokyo on the expressway which costs 7800Y in tolls. We stopped by lunch at the Ano town expressway rest stop and had a really good bowl of the local specialty milk dandan noodles. I booked a cabin at Fuji Milk Land on the Asagiri plateau, but the weather was poor and we couldn’t see Fuji. Stopped at a grocery store for some food and grilled it on the electric hotplate that the cabin had.
**Day 8.**
The weather got even worse and we visited a completely empty Shiraito falls at 10am which was actually pretty amazing. Decided to get an early brunch at a yakisoba/okonomiyaki restaurant called Mumesan and I’m really glad we got there as it opened because a huge line formed up behind us right after we got in. Drove down to Fujisan Hongen Sengen Taisha for a goshuin, then continued east towards Gotemba. Parked at our hotel’s parking lot and took the shuttle bus to Kirin Fuji whisky distillery for a booked tour. It was a good tour with a high production value, though I personally liked the yamazaki distillery tour in Kyoto is a tad better. After sampling some whiskey and taking a tour of the gift shop, we went back to Gotemba and checked-in to our hotel near the station then went to a local izakaya for dinner.
**Day 9.**
It snowed heavily overnight but cleared by morning. We finally saw Mt. Fuji from our hotel window then made the drive through a very snowy mountain pass through Hakone back to Odawara where we returned our rental car. We then took a train to Enoshima where we spent around 2h walking around the island, then went back to Tokyo. Our hotel was near Komagome which had a shopping street near the station and we had monjayaki a second time on this trip, this time at Sakaba Monja.
**Day 10**
Went to meiji jingu for a goshuin because I somehow never got that one, then walked over to Yoyogi for a seafood festival and had a bunch of yummy stuff from the stalls. Headed to Yushima shrine for the plum festival, got a goshuin and joined the mikoshi procession through the neighbourhood for ~45mins until they all stopped for a smoke break. Headed to Asahi building in the afternoon and had a beer with snacks on the terrace. Headed back and went to Sakaba Monja a second time because I really wanted to try the camembert cheese monja.
**Day 11**
Day trip to do a hike at Takao, was lucky to have a nearly deserted trail with nice views of fuji on top. Had dinner at a really good yakitori place called Yakitori Don.
**Day 12.**
Stored our luggage in a locker and went to Ueno zoo. Grabbed a late lunch of tsukemen at Menya musashi then headed to Narita and back home.
**Bonus:**
I loved almost everything I ate during this trip and wanted to highlight some interesting foods that are delicious but probably seldomly tried by tourists.
######Shiokara
This is usually strips of raw squid or octopus fermented in its own stomach contents and viscera. Now that honestly sounds disgusting but the flavour is fantastic with strong seafood umami, like if you super concentrated some dry squid then made it wet… That still stounds awful but it’s really good with some alcohol.
######Mola mola
I got to try sunfish sashimi as a “daily special” at a roadside restaurant. It had a very clean taste similar to sea bream, but more mild and with a hint of its own distinctive flavour.
######Basashi
I finally decided to give horse sashimi a try and was pleasantly surprised. No gamey taste whatsoever, and reminded me of raw beef without any of the beef taste if it makes any sense. If you like beef tartare I urge you to try it, really good paired with shiso or wasabi.
######Fugu shirako
Tiger fugu milt is considered a time-limited delicacy as it’s usually only available between December and March. It was served to us lightly grilled and had a very creamy umami taste without any fishiness, it reminded me of a very fatty fish belly. I highly recommend trying it if you plan to visit during the time it’s available.
Also, I watched some food youtubers who generally described fugu as tasteless. It’s a white fish so the flavour is not strong, but it actually has a very distinct flavour that I really enjoyed! I had it grilled, fried, sashimi, and part of a nabe, and enjoyed the nabe the most. I didn’t really like the fin sake though, it just tasted like fishy sake to me.
by table454545