Hey there.
I’ll be flying in and out March31 – May 26th 2022. This will be my second trip there (if covid allows it). Not entirely sure if my timetable works, and with a few locations (mainly during the driving portion), I don’t know much of what’s to do in the areas. Last time I visited Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima. Any feedback is very welcome.
I know very very basic japanese. Numbers, how to ask for some direction, basic greetings and thank yous, etc.
I’ve paid for about half of my Hotel/Airbnb so far, so 800$ left to pay. But it’s all booked. I’m estimating around 1500$ for food (I love food). about 400$ for various trains/bus. 300$ for tickets to attractions/ museums / theme parks. the biggest extra expense yet to be paid is an estimated 2000$ for renting a car for 2 weeks of travel. 1400$ for the car, 300$ for gas, 300$ for the Japan toll highway pass.
**March 31 I leave and Arrive Narita April 1.**
Arrive in Narita at 3pm
SkyLiner to Tokyo
**1-4 April: Shinjuku Tokyo.** Not much planned here. Relax, eat, explore the area a bit. I stayed in Shinjuku before, so I wander the red light areas and munch.
**4-5th April: Tokyo-Osaka** Going to try out an Overnight bus. They sound and look neat for the price. Last time I used a shinkansen, so I want to branch out and try new things.
**5th – 11th April: Osaka.** This is supposed to be a foodie paradise, so I’m looking forward to lots of meals and snacks. I want to go to the Universal Studios in Osaka, especially the Nintendo area. I’ll probably get an Osaka Adventure pass and travel the city for a day or 2. I’d like to take a day trip to Kobe and get a nice Wagyu Kobe dinner. Not sure where is worth it though. Also visiting Osakako and ride the Tempozan Ferris Wheel at night. Something I’ve wanted to do since watching Inuyasha as a kid.
**11-13 April: Kyoto.** I’ll take the train to Kyoto early in the morning. I’ve been here before for a few days, but would like to visit again. I’ve already been to the Monkey park and Manga Museum. Would like to see a the bamboo forest are and some others.
**13th April:** I’ll leave early in the morning and take the shinkansen back to Tokyo. I’ll be going to pick up a car in the outskirts of the city. I’ve never driven on the opposite side of the road, so thought it best to rent where there’s a bit less traffic to acclimate.
**2 week driving Japan adventure**
**13th – 16th April: Tokyo -5 hour drive- Sendai.** I know they’re well known for their beef tongue, looking forward to that. I’d like to take a boat tour between Sendai and Matsushima. Don’t know what else.
**16th-17th April: Sendai -8 hour drive- Takayama**: Won’t have much time here. Just the night after a long drive. Maybe grab some dinner.
**17th – 18th April: Takayama -8 hour drive- Okayama**: There’s not anything i really want to do in Okayama, so the drive is the highlight. I want to visit Shirakawa-go and Tojinbo cliffs in Fukui for example on the drive there.
**17th-18th April Okayama -5 hour drive- Fukuoka:** Found a nice hotel in Nakasu and plan on just walking the area and eating around.
**19th-21st April: Fukuoka -2 hour drive- Kumamoto:** This is my final destination before going back to Tokyo. I’m a big one piece fan. So I’ll be visiting the various one piece statues spread throughout the region. Also looking forward to trying out the horse meat specialties. Aside from also visiting Mount Aso, not sure what else to do.
**21-22th April: Kumamoto -8 hour drive/ferry- Innoshima:** So on my way to the next place, there is a ferry in Saganoseki that I think I’d like to try that allows cars to board as well. Add’s an extra hour to my travel time, but I think it would be a neat addition, along with not having to backtrack through places I’ve already driven. Innoshima seems like a nice chill area to stay the night in.
**22-23th April: Innoshima -8 hour drive- to Kitayama:** The drive there will be the highlight, trying to stop in small areas to look around/eat. Recommendations?
**23rd-27th April: Kitayama -3 hour drive- Fujiyoshida:** I’ll be waking up super early. There is a really cool forest nearby I’d like to hike/walk around at 6am for an hour or so…. The last main stop is around Mt. Fuji. I’ll have a few days to drive around the mountain and visit various small towns. Any recommendations for what to do is greatly appreciated.
27th April: Back to Tokyo. **End of driving Adventure**
**27th-6th May: Tokyo.** Well I’m back in Tokyo and I’ll be staying in Shibuya. I’d like to visit the Ghibli museum again. As well as go to DisneySea for the first time. I plan on going souvenir hunting for myself and family. Including getting a nice knife for my mom for cooking. I know it’ll be golden week, so any recommendations during this time is welcome.
**May 6th flight back home at 6pm.**
Any locations or MUST EAT foods/restaurants, let me know. There’s only so much you can look up and first hand accounts are always better.
I think my 2 weeks for driving will have a couple hectic driving days, but I think I have myself enough downtime to be fine. I’m just really looking forward to getting out of the the tourist areas and seeing the countryside in person. Thanks for any and all feedback!
8 comments
I think the whole car part is a really bad idea, in many days, you won’t have much time to do anything else than drive. For me car make sense in area without good public transport, so especially in the countryside. Still, I’ve visited 37 prefectures so far and never rented a car.
Would be much cheaper to use the train, does not make much sense to go to Osaka for a couple of days just to go to Tokyo rend a car to literally pass by Osaka again.
If it was me, I would rather do a 2 or 3 weeks JR Pass than do your actual plan. Like I would even consider taking the bus to Osaka then start the 3 weeks from there (going west first) and end up in Tokyo. Fujiyoshida/Kawaguchiko can be done as a day trip or overnight trip from Tokyo.
Also speaking as someone who have done a 3 weeks trip from Tokyo to Nagasaki then to Hakodate, doing 1 city a day, the biggest down point to that kind of fast travel all around Japan, then the trip I did after, I ended up passing by some of the same regions as there was still more to see that I’ve not seen the first time. Like I’ve been to Kyushu for almost a week over two trips and my next trip I want to do a whole 3 weeks in Kyushu and feel I would only scratch what there is to discover.
Hey! I honestly love that you’re doing the 2 week driving adventure. I adore driving in Japan and have driven across the country a few times. You can go at your own pace, and reach/ stop at any areas of interest super easily. The only issue is the most scenic driving happens on the rural roads, which usually cap out at 50kmph, where if you want to get real speed you’ll be driving on expressways which sorta kill the vibe a bit. I noticed your first stop from Tokyo is Sendai, would you consider keeping your driving trip to Tohoku? Especially since you’re already up there. It’s a smaller area to cover, and the whole area is great to explore by car. You could make your way through the interior and to niigata, and try out Sado Island, it’s a super scenic little island that I love, very nice to drive around. I personally find the best driving in Japan is probably in Shikoku, you can’t get more rural than that.
Good call grabbing a car outside of Tokyo, you don’t want your first driving experience to be there. I think the easiest first experiences are in the less hectic areas. By the way, google maps directions are honestly pretty accurate when it comes to time between locations, and they allow you to choose toll/non toll roads.
But yeah! Your regular itinerary looks good to me. You could always start first in Osaka or Kyoto too, that way you won’t have to do so much back and forth, and only do the one train ride to Tokyo.
You do realize the borders are closed to tourists indefinitely, yet you’re planning a trip that’s 6 months away? And the whole thing in a car? Every single part of this is a bad idea. I can basically go ahead and personally guarantee you that this trip isn’t going to happen in March. Did you just blindly buy a plane ticket in hopes that the borders will somehow miraculously open within 6 months? Genuinely curious what was going through your head to make you think this was even a somewhat plausible idea?
Replying to: “Hah. It’s all good. I bought the ticket a year ago. Both the ticket and
all the airbnb/hotels are refundable and………………”
Good! Make sure you read up on the terms and conditions of that agreement and rescheduling policy, assess all fees or restrictions associated with it sooner rather than later and get a good understand of what that process is like and timeline restrictions, etc. now, because I can go ahead and promise you you’re going to need to utilize it.
The drive upto Sendai is nice.. but most of the highway through Saitama, Ibaraki, Tochigi etc is whack. A lot of Fukushima is boring af too. There are some good mountain ranges to see but nothing special. The drive back around to Fukui should be much better imo. You should be fine driving, there are no roundabouts and the speed limits are much slower than other countries. You can just chill in the slow lane at 70km/h and take it all in. If you can afford the time to come off the highway at any point though i would advise it.. you will see much more of the real Japan.
Also if you’re in Shinjuku and fancy some drinks hit me up. We own a bar in Kabukicho and love meeting new people!
I’ve ridden around much of Japan on a motorbike and honestly, driving between places kinda sucks. Because Japan is thin and long, it’s jam packed with traffic.
If you can, get to out of the way places and minimise time going between them. This means Shikoku, Hokkaido and Kyushu. Places that aren’t on the way to anywhere else.
My favourite trip was Shikoku, particularly the west coast area and Matsuyama. Central Shikoku was great too.
As an aside, getting a ferry between places was awesome for saving time and having a different kind of experience.
The ferry between Matsuyama and Kobe (Osaka??) was pretty good. They will often be overnight kind of situations, where you drive on, eat dinner, fall asleep on the floor in a big shared room (30 people+ sometimes), then drive off in the morning. Doing this helps dodge the boring bits too.
A tip from a resident living in Sendai…
1. Driving from Tokyo to Sendai can take 6 hours considering you take some stops at the SAs. (Service areas) and it’s pretty boring. The toll fees are around ¥9,000. The Hayabusa shinkansen would take only 90 minutes from Tokyo to Sendai and only costs ¥11,410… I strongly recommend the Shinkansen.
Things you can do in Sendai ( sorry if any of the locations are closed due to COVID)
• Nikka whiskey distillery ( buses available from Sendai station, you can get free tastings so should go by public transport)
• Kirin beer factory
• Shiogama shrine at Shiogama city. You can take the train to Matsushima, get on a tourist ferry that would take you to Shiogama. You can take the train back to Sendai from there. They also have a sake factory nearby and very nice sushi.
I don’t think there are any boat tours from Sendai to Matsushima, you would have to get to Matsushima by train or car.( train recommended)
• Osaki Hachimangu, a shrine that was worshipped by lord Masamune. Is listed as a national treasure.
• Arahama elementary school: is currently preserved as a memorial for the 2011 earthquake/tsunami.
• Aoba castle : only remains left so you might get a bit disappointed but nice view of Sendai city.
Apart from the beef tongue, make sure to get some Sushi and Zunda ( edamame) milkshakes!!
Driving around Japan can be great fun just in itself, and I see from your replies that you’ve already planned to avoid the expressways – that’s great, because they really become a trudge rather quickly (do use them to get in/out of the cities, though).
That said, I’ve done a number of these kind of roadtrips and my own recommendation would be, if you can afford it, to not plan for more than ~200km of driving on average per day (ideally closer to 100 than 200). The idea is to give you ample time to freely stop and explore your surroundings, and not just skip the expressway for the regular highway, but also sometimes skip the regular highway for the tiny one-way mountain roads through nowhere county – or to even stop and explore some random location you happenstanced across for an hour or two.
To me, part of the fun is not being in a particular hurry, so I try to keep my pre-planned reservations to a minimum, and instead keep a general direction of travel in mind with a couple of key stops to guide you, but ideally not hammering down any specific dates for when I have to be where. This of course means that sometimes you have to cut your trip “short” of what you had originally actually intended, and possibly also making a really, really log leg on the last day, but joy of discovery and freedom more than makes it up for me. There’s always a next time, if you want to.
With this in mind, you have a fair bit of stretches that go up to the 250km+ territory per day. I’ve done 4000+km over 3 weeks or so, and that was the time I realized that I really should slow down my pace and leave slightly more room in my plans. You’re trying to do ~3000 km (…and this is just the no-frills straight route) in two weeks going a bit all over the place, and while that’s definitively doable, I’d probably feel myself that I was missing out a bit because of the “oh, I must move on now so i can make my next place” -effect. YMMV, of course.