Just got back from a trip to Japan and wanted to share my experience of driving in the country, as it was more stressful than I was expecting and personally would suggest to avoid driving (despite all of the blog posts telling you it’s a piece of cake). I’ll elaborate on my reasoning within this post, but look forward to the discussion.
A quick background and context – I have driven in multiple countries across the world from the small narrow windy village roads in the south of France, the famous Italian dolomite mountain curves, lefthand drive in the UK, and I currently live in New York City where I’m familiar with intense city driving and a lot of distractions. My girlfriend is able to read Japanese, as she is fluent in Chinese and the characters are similar enough to understand the meaning a majority of the time – she was my copilot helping me navigate and read all of the signs in this journey. We decided to drive for part of our Japan trip as we wanted to visit onsens in Kusatsu, Kamakochi park, Takayama, and Shiragawa-go, and finally arriving in Kanazawa – the train/bus schedule to go between these points added up to a couple of days to do things comfortably, while with driving we could knock it out in just 2-3 days. I brushed up on my Japanese road signs and rules of the road from some websites (stop at railroad crossings, what the signs mean, right of ways in scenarios, traffic lights, etc) as well.
We started the driving by heading outside of Tokyo to Takasaki, which is a medium sized city and has a handful of large rental car lots available next to the Shinkansen station. I knew that I would be uncomfortable driving in a mega city like Tokyo, so this felt like the natural decision for less stress. After picking up the car as we were exiting the garage, the car in front of us exiting the lot was in reverse as it tried to accelerate onto the main road. Luckily I honked the horn and shifted our car into reverse quickly so they didn’t’ smash into us, but it was close and within the first 2 minutes of being in the car. We chalked this up to it being a car rental place and someone had no idea what they were doing in that car they just rented, but it was still jolting.
After pulling out of the lot unscathed we did some loops around some small residential streets for me to be reacquainted with lefthand drive (it’s been a while since my UK trip) and to make sure I was comfortable with the car before darting off onto busy roads. Within a few minutes of driving around I felt comfortable, that is until another car ran a stop sign (*we checked closely if I had missed any sign or road marking, but determined we had the right of way and they indeed had a stop sign*) and we had to slam on the brakes… This is where I realized it was going to be an interesting experience driving in Japan. I also started realizing as we left Takasaki that the rural roads in Japan are actually quite narrow compared to other countries. There was only maybe a foot of pavement on either side of the car in our lane. We rented a Toyota Corolla JP version, which is 1.78m (68.7″ / 5’9) wide, meaning the lane was close to 2.5m (\~8′) wide. If you’re familiar with US driving, at a similar speed limit you would likely see roads that are 3 to 3.3m (10′ – 11′) wide depending on where you’re at in the country. We also quickly realized that in Japan, almost everyone speeds – It wasn’t uncommon to see people doing 20km/hr over the speed limit on a 40km/hr limit road.
After navigating to Kusatsu (*nothing eventful happened here, it was mostly easy country driving*) we headed over the mountains to our Onsen in Yamanochi for the night. I knew this road was going to be some intense mountain driving (*if you check it out on the map, there are plenty of sharp turns and switch backs*), plus it goes over the highest mountain road in Japan. This is where the road started getting even smaller than in the regular rural roads, at times it felt it was close to 2 meters wide (slightly under 8′). It’s also an observation of mine, but locals on mountain roads love to drive fast and the same applied here – I found myself pulling over to let the locals zip by as they were traveling quite fast for the level of curves around (I was already going over the speed limit, but seeing the cliffs below and not knowing the road layout ahead aside from GPS, I decided to let them pass).
Then we hit a construction site – all of the signs announcing construction were easy to spot, but were only in Japanese and had no pictographs. My girlfriend quickly translated as “lines are merging” and “the road changes ahead” so I figured something would require a lane shift of sorts. We approached some cones that started having us merge and an LED message board that cycled between “GO” and “SLOW” (which was translated to me from Japanese). There was also one of [those spinning LED construction signs to get you to pay attention](https://i.imgur.com/8rO4loY.png) and most importantly something I had missed… It was a [red LED light](https://i.imgur.com/tnBZTH4.jpg) (*next to the* [*distracting spinning/flashing LED light*](https://i.imgur.com/8rO4loY.png)) – I slowed down drastically but neither of us noticed it with all of the other distractions. We stopped for a few seconds and my girlfriend again translated the flashing LED message board as it said “GO” and “SLOW”. As I started inching past all of the signs thinking it was okay to go because the sign said “Go Slow”, I realize as I pulled into the single lane that the oncoming traffic was also sharing this lane. I saw headlights coming fast and I quickly reversed while also flashing the brights in case they didn’t see me. As we reversed back to the signage and lane merge freaked out, we then sat there reading everything again and looking at the message board flash between “GO” and “SLOW”. Suddenly the red LED light turned green and now realized that we had completely [missed a portable traffic light](https://i.imgur.com/tnBZTH4.jpg) amongst the other signage and flashing lights. We realized our mistake and carried forward from another close call. For what it’s worth, of all the quick posts and guides for driving in Japan, none of them had mentioned this type of portable traffic light (in other parts of the world it’s always been a full size regular traffic light that is on wheels), so it wasn’t easily recognizable to us as one. I’d also call out that this site was in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn’t as nice of equipment compared to things I had seen on highways and big cities [such as these mobile trucks in Tokyo](https://i.imgur.com/X6QvIhx.jpg).
When we got into our onsen town, we encountered some of the most narrow alleyways and streets to navigate to our hotel. These were mere inches away from our car and you could easily see damage to the buildings from cars that had scraped the corner making turns or navigating the narrow roads. A few times our GPS tried to navigate us down streets that were marked as pedestrian only until a certain time, or some that were not really designed for cars, an additional frustration to an already tight squeeze.
After parking our car at the hotel, we headed off to Kamicohi (the bus parking lot – we did not drive in the park as that’s not allowed) where we had some solid highway driving. This part of the trip was really smooth sailing (aside from the high tolls) – the only thing to callout is that Japanese drivers disregard the 100km/hr speed limit on highways. I personally am a bit of a fast driver when I feel comfortable, so I happily joined a speed train and kept pace with the flow of traffic after letting some of the aggressive speeders be the lead for any speed cams or cop cars. There was some minor lane construction, but on the main highway the signs were very clear to understand with plenty of notice and pictographs for clarity.
On the road from Kamicohi to Takayama is where it quickly became the narrowest section, heading down windy mountain roads where it felt like we only had inches on either side of the car (and no shoulder, just a barrier next to our lane). Whenever a bus or truck would pass us, I had to slow down drastically and be mere inches away from a barrier as the side of their vehicle was partially in our lane. If I had to guess, the road was 2 meters (80 inches / 6.6′) for most of it, with a handful sections coming in under this when accounting for utility poles or rocks on the side of the road, or large oncoming vehicles coming slightly into your lane. My girlfriend kept reminding me if I was too close to her side of the car, but at times I was already getting too close to the oncoming traffic lane. Here is where I felt I wish I had rented one of those incredibly tiny narrow cars that you see a lot of Japanese people driving in the country side – they looked to be about a foot more narrow than the Toyota we had rented and would have made these narrow sections easier to drive on.
As we arrived into Takayama, we drove past a few lots for parking and noticed it was quite expensive to park here. It was close to 200 yen per 15 minutes at a handful of lots or paying for large periods of time at certain lots to get any sort of deal. We obviously ponied up and parked the car as we only planned to stay for a few hours at most. Then on the road to Kanazawa is where things got interesting yet again – the highway had closed half of the road for bridge repairs and required a full lane shift. This isn’t that bad, however it was pitch black and the number of LED construction signs and cones made it incredibly distracting to drive. I had never seen so many flashing LED construction cones at once before – it’s actually counter intuitive in my opinion as that high of a density of flashing LEDs felt distracting and almost blinding in the pitch darkness of the mountains.
As we got close to Kanazawa, we had another encounter where we had the right of way on a single lane highway and a car just pulled out in front of us to merge into the road from an onramp. (Luckily we were again able to stop in time to avoid an accident).
As we exited the highway and into Kanazawa the driving quickly became more intense as we found ourselves amongst tall buildings and tons of pedestrians. We opted to find parking as fast as we could and get some dinner, but not before the GPS told us to head down this super exciting bar and restaurant street (cars were surprisingly allowed as no signs or marking prohibited any traffic) that was filled with pedestrians and cyclists to take a shortcut to the garage. I decided to bypass that shortcut as it felt too chaotic for my comfort level (*the equivalent of driving down a busy bar street in the Lower East Side in New York City after 2am on Friday night, or maybe the center isle of your local town farmers market to give you a sense of how busy it was*). After backing into the worlds most narrow parking spot for the night, I had a sigh of relief knowing I’d return the car in the morning.
# TLDR / Summary
Driving in Japan was much more stressful and draining than I expected. I felt like I had to be dialed into an F1 race car to deal with the small roads and sharp turns on my mountain drives. Cities had a handful of bad drivers that ran stop signs and merged without looking on multiple occasions, and plenty of narrow roads full of pedestrians/cyclists that were also open to cars. Some small towns had roads as narrow as the villages in the south of France or Italy – be ready to have a tight squeeze.
Reading through all of the signage guides, rules of the road, and blogposts for driving in Japan did not prepare me enough for some of the oddities we encountered in construction zones.
Having a copilot who can read Japanese was incredibly helpful as a lot of signs were only in Japanese or would be a regular pictograph sign with subtext informing you of when you could or could not enter the road/or when rules applied. However even having a good ability to read Japanese, the “GO” “SLOW” sign was maybe a too literal of a translation (it may have meant “drive slow”) and ended up confusing us because we assumed we could go based off that sign.
GPS (in car GPS and Google Maps) is not always reliable, although the country side had more mislabeled speed limits and incorrect information for stores/places/roads. This also caused questionable ETAs as Google incorrectly assumed speed limits.
Highway driving in Japan is quite pleasant (*but expensive*), once you’re on rural roads expect a more demanding driving experience.
I was mentally prepared for lefthand driving (*it’s honestly not hard after the first few minutes and feels quite natural*). If it’s your first time, just drive around a few small city blocks that aren’t too busy to get acquainted with it.
All things being said, I’m glad we were able to see a lot of the country that otherwise would have not be as feasible with our timeline due to bus/train schedules, and I would still do it again if a future itinerary called for a car to see more remote areas.
# Tips & Suggestions
* Prepare and read up on roadsigns, rules, right of way rules, and oddities of driving in Japan as much as you can. [Here’s a quick guidebook to driving in Japan that’s a little more in depth than some casual blog posts.](https://cnrj.cnic.navy.mil/Portals/80/NAF_Atsugi/Documents/Safety%20Office/Drive%20in%20Japan%202023%20NAF%20Atsugi.pdf?ver=9KPfe-wrU8rst4AmrYza-Q%3D%3D) (But still lacking on a lot of details). Be sure to read up on drinking and driving in Japan – there is 0 tolerance and even having a drink the night before could be used against you if there is an accident (responsible or not).
* Have a co-pilot who can assist you, watch out for roadsigns, navigate with GPS, help watch out for getting close to their side of the car on narrow roads, parking in tight spaces, etc. Make sure you have them read up on Japanese road signs as well. Make sure they are aware they will need to help you drive – it’s not a sit on your phone and DJ type of road trip.
* Ideally you’d have someone who can help you read Japanese, or at minimum maybe have a smartphone with telephoto they can quickly use to Google Translate via camera as you encounter roadsigns with restrictions / etc. in Japanese.
* Rent a car outside of the big cities like Tokyo or Osaka. It’s worth the extra time to take the Shinkansen a stop or a local train outside of the city center. It’ll be much easier to drive and you’ll have less to worry about as you get familiar with driving on the left side and get acquainted with your new rental car. I’d also still suggest returning your car outside of any large cities, Kanazawa was already a lot going on in my experience and could have become overwhelming despite becoming more familiar with driving in Japan and being familiar with city driving in NYC back home.
* Consider taking the full suite of rental car insurance offered – at Toyota rent a car it was actually quite cheap compared to the US rental car agencies (just 1,200 yen per day for full coverage and no payment if anything happened), which offered a huge piece of mind.
* Consider renting a smaller Japanese car (the tiny boxy looking vans), as it will make driving on narrow rural roads much easier compared to a regular width car (*even the Japanese Toyota Corolla felt too wide on some rural mountain roads*).
* Bake in extra travel time between locations when doing your planning – Google Maps incorrectly estimated ETAs on a handful of our routes due to the slow speed limits, or sometimes tight mountain curves requiring you to go slower than you had anticipated. It’s also better to never be in a rush because driving in Japan requires a lot of attention and you don’t want added stress of catching a flight or making a dinner reservation.
* If you can, only rent a car for the part of your itinerary where taking trains or busses is not practical.
24 comments
Was there last month. 99% of my driving is from north america, and I felt the complete opposite of your post.
I too understand kanji, but out of Tokyo to fuji it was great. Even around Fuji was stress free with one of the roads being down to one lane for construction and had to stop, etc.
Would take driving in japan over driving in Toronto all day, every day.
This was just WAY too long to read.. I don’t totally disagree with you on the speeding and narrow roads, but I’ve been driven up and down the mountain overlooking Lake Como by a crazy driver, surrounded by others. 20 kph over? If the speed limit in Japan is 40 k, it’s 40 mph in the states. And I don’t enjoy the 20 over they do here.
If there is one comment I will make about my time in Japan, other than how my friends liked to speed through the mountains, it was the accident I had which was technically my fault. I was trying to get to the photo shop before it closed and ran into rush hour traffic. Yep. Not at all important. I decided to do a u-turn, looked first and saw the car coming would have had time to stop multiple times over at that speed, so I did the turn, which I could not complete, and looked up, saw the driver still coming toward me, then she hit me. Like I said, legally my fault. It was the look she had on her face that betrayed that Japanese way of thinking, “he is not supposed to do that, so obviously he didn’t do it, and I don’t need to stop”. BAM!
You’re not joking about the speeding. The travel blogs and youtubers that I watched before driving there in 2019 said that speed limits are strictly enforced and that you’d better follow them.
I think they misspoke and that the cars have speed limiters that the drivers like to test out on their regular commutes.
I am from the US and I like driving in Japan. I have driven near Kuwana and in Tohoku.
I tend to take a lot of expressways, I find driving on the expressways is so darn easy. I have seen construction on the expressways, but it was fairly obvious what was going on, the road was going from two lanes to one and the speed limit was dropping because of roadwork.
Yes, there are 100% barely one lane roads that I don’t enjoy driving on, some of the ones I took last trip could have been avoided and some could not. I was the only one on mine though.
I do agree with you that GPS both car and Google can be problematic. I had 1 car GPS that kept trying to avoid expressways and another that just could not find anything. Google decided to pronounce everything with Chinese pronunciation and went dead right when I was 1 km from the return car agency and all the streets were one way! But these things can happen outside of Japan.
Things I love about Japan, even when speeding, no one is going stupid fast like the freaking roads in Orange County, CA. The speed limit is like 55 mph on regular roads, which are all 6+ lanes in either direction and you have next to no time to get over if you don’t know where you are going. And speaking of getting over, British drivers will never let you in and go 70+ mph on roads you think should have a 35 mph speed limit, see the roads in Angelsey, Wales.
thinking of a trip thru the japan alps next year. did you pick up the car in takasaki and drop off in kanazawa? how were the one way fees? And I assume you just came back so you went in sept?
I also live in NYC and have driven in France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Hong Kong, Croatia and Austria. I’ve found the driving in Japan to be above average among those places, and much better than at home.
I mostly recently drove around Hokkaido. People are generally driving very predictably and not overly aggressive. It honestly felt so much safer than driving in NYC, where you can’t drive for 10 min without witnessing some super aggressive lane changing or people running a red or honking at people just trying to cross the street on a green light. It’s literally night and day.
As far as speeding what I’ve found is that the speed limits there are ridiculously low. The main highway from Hakodate to Sapporo was 70km/h and everyone was safely doing 100. That’s completely fine with me. People do the same in the US, except the speed limits are higher for similar roads and people like hogging the passing lane so it’s so much more dangerous. At least people in Japan only drive on the passing lane when passing.
If you think the Japanese mountain roads are narrow and the locals are speeding, then don’t go to Ireland. You will likely have a heart attack there. The Japanese are very tame in comparison.
The sign thing is just you not understanding how it works locally – that’s going to happen anywhere that you don’t understand the local signage. I had the toughest time in Italy not realizing where the areas that you cannot enter are. Got into bad situations a few times and got a ticket too.
The first two incidents seem related to tourists not knowing what they’re doing since they seem to have happened near the car rental.
So overall I’m sorry you didn’t have a good experience, but don’t really agree that it is reflective of the driving in Japan overall.
Was driving the rental car at Atami and the GPS got us going through the smalll narrow road. Not only that, some of the roads are at an angle that I swear is at least 45 degrees or more driving downwards. Luckily it was a quiet road so there were no real stress for cars behind me.
I was super aware with my surroundings as so not to scrape the rental but I found it 30% stressful 70% fun
I lived in Kyushu for two years and 1 year in Tokyo. My quality of life went up significantly when I switched my one hour drive for a train commute from year one to year two. While many people probably would have few issues driving, I agree with the OP that most travelers to Japan would be better off without driving. If you do have an accident it will completely ruin the trip, and the number of places you can get to on public transportation are extensive, many of which are off the beaten path. On my upcoming trip, I’m going to Tokyo, Hakone, Kanazawa, Takayama, and Okuhida onsen, and I have it planned out to go by shinkansen, local trains and buses.
Moreover, I absolutely love traveling by train in Japan, and I’m going to really miss the rail passes when the price goes up. I’m probably going to take one day in Nov to just ride up and down the coast or up into the mountains by train. I love the shinkansen and I love the local trains. Urban subways, I don’t love but they are efficient, easy and cheap.
Will be there soon and curious how much it cost in total to use the highway for your entire trip?
Sounds very much not fun. I’ve been to the cities you’ve mentioned by train or bus and it was fine.
I live in the mountains of Montana, but I did not find any of the driving in Hokkaido to be difficult. We would have a 70 mph speed limit on similar roads, even the narrow ones. We didn’t even bother with 4wd in February.
Driving right now. From Australia so same side of the road.
Opposite experience for me, had no problems Hakone, Izu, Kanazawa, Takayama and Matsumoto.
All fairly intuitive and love that the speed limit is advisory, I just match speeds with my fellow Drivers and enjoy the ride.
Would you recommend renting a car in Sapporo / hokkaido?
I found Japan to be a bit more easier than I thought….
Also I find highways to be 80km/h but people do up to 140km/h or more and cops don’t seem to care, unless if ur blasting 200km/h in the middle of Tokyo. In Australia if your over 1km/h, your getting a ticket though cops or camera scatted heaps on roads, heard Japan have speed cameras and whatnot, but didn’t see much and I driven quite a fair bit there.
I wouldn’t let this post discourage anyone from giving it a go. Sorry your experience wasn’t great, but mine was very different. Renting a car was cheap and easy, roads are safe and well maintained. You’re right about speeding, and narrow roads but I found japanese drivers to be safe and courteous and never saw anything I would consider dangerous driving.
Having a car opens up a lot of cool places off the beaten track that aren’t easily accessible by public transport in places like Towada/Oriase, Shirakami sanchi, Kawasaki (miyagi).
I always recommend people don’t rent a car in Japan. Public transit is so good, so fast, so clean, so cheap, and so efficient… just take the train.
I wonder if having a co-pilot who reads Japanese (but I seem to understand is not from Japan originally) was causing more problems than it was worth. That lulls you into a sense of relying on them instead of figuring it out with your eyes and brain. I had no trouble following my gps out of Kanazawa central, through the alps, and later into Nagoya central. Had a wife with me and neither of us could read the signage.
Drove all around Kyushu this summer and found it super easy compared to Italy or Europe in general: low speed limits and people generally respecting them make for a relaxing drive, with lots of time to anticipate small surprises. Google Maps never missed a beat even with complex intersections.
Just adding a small comment to add on to what essentially everyone’s saying : OP’s experience is valid but in no way representative of the common Japan driving experience.
Mine was awesome : we drove on highways, small towns, mountains and even in Okinawa where it’s a bit worse. The courtesy of the drivers and perfectly placed signs were a delight. We don’t read kanjis and found the key roadsigns to be very clear (moreover, there are usually several actual human beings directing traffic when construction work is blocking the road).
Yes, try to avoid driving in big cities (even though I didn’t find it difficult either in Kanazawa) and be careful in small roads. Common sense is basically all you’ll need. Also, as OP said, renting a kei car helps a lot!
Thank you very much! We are a very similar traveling constellation as you and appreciate the advice here! We want to drive a little more into the country side and want to be as prepared as possible.
Again. Thanks for taking the time for this extensive text!
Saving this for my trip at the end of the month.
Am currently in Morioka, preparing to make my way up to Hachinohe with the missus and my 2 parents in tow. They all are loving the road trips so far. (we are from. Singapore). This is my 4th time self driving, 15th trip to Japan. Me and wife have sweared off the public transport after self driving the first time. Driving here has so far been a joy and God send to both of us.
So yea, I am sorry OP had a bad experience but I supposed it’s a one off incident.
My experience driving in Japan is positive, I do fly drive holidays to Japan twice a year spending approximately 6 weeks a year pottering around and a vehicle is essential for the places we visit.
We accidentally found ourselves in Japan without a vehicle earlier this year; I had lost my license and the Japanese are a stickler for correct paperwork.
The trains in Japan are excellent so that was the logical choice after frantic search for my license proved fruitless.
As we had planned a driving route and pre booked the hotels, we were faced with the prospect of following the same itinerary but instead by train/taxi.
Summary:
By train we saw less stuff in between stops – in a car we would normally drop into interesting shops or sights or temples as we go.
We spent more time and money on travel – this reflects that our itinerary was designed for a vehicle and was not efficient by train. A train based itinerary would not see the things we usually seek.
We were watching the clock all the time – normally we get up, relax, have little agenda to worry about, and make our way to destination at our leisure.
We spent a lot of time planning routes – this is circumstantial, this route planning need not consume holiday time if it was done in advance.
We dropped about a quarter of our planned itinerary due to inaccessibility or impossible distances – driving routes across mountain ranges are often more direct than the circuitous routes and train changes necessary to get from A to B.
Some links are faster and we created time in places we didn’t plan to spend time. Other locations required an hour taxi from the closest station and our sightseeing opportunities disintegrated.
We do love trains and some of the smaller independent lines are so cute. The views from many of the train lines are great, and it’s relaxing to sit back and let someone else drive.
Conclusion:
After three weeks darting around on trains we felt like we really hadn’t had the holiday we wanted. In two weeks we are going back to Japan and will take nearly the exact same itinerary but with a vehicle, and duplicate copies of all my documents.
For more about driving:
– Toll roads are expensive and rack up fast.
– Speed limits are very low and are frequently ignored but there are cameras and I’ve slipped through a few without realising until it’s too late, I am yet to be fined but I do try to notice them.
– The roads are narrow but the cars and vans and trucks are too, no need to be overly concerned about this.
– Drivers are generally more courteous, there’s always some that aren’t.
– Do try to avoid peak hour, sometimes it’s hard when you’re on holiday and barely know what day of the week it is.
– The signs are clear, mostly, and the sat nav systems work fine when you get the hang of it, use phone number for your destination.
– Enjoy the roadworks, they have the cutest barrier designs
Edit: fixed most spelling and grammatical errors
Literally just drove from Tokyo to Mount Fuji and back for a weekend break and it was my first time driving in Japan and it was incredibly relaxing and stress free. Honestly I cannot relate to a single thing you’ve posted.