Who we Are

We live in Brisbane, Australia and first went to Japan in 1998 and fell in love with it and have been returning there ever since. Still can’t speak the language much but muddle through successfully even in the remoter areas.

We love the character, the culture and the food of the cities but the countryside even more and most of our trips involve an expedition into the country.

Most of our trips now are preceded by lots of internet research because it’s difficult to get answers once you are in Japan unless you have inside help. You can do the research there but it is time consuming and cuts into valuable sightseeing time. Plus you need to sort out what you are going to see beforehand to get your itinerary set.

One of our major discoveries was reading a travel blog by a visiting man and his family who rented a car and did two trips from Kyoto, one to the Kii peninsula to the south and the other the Tango peninsula to the north. We were encouraged by him to rent a car ourselves and give it a go.

Driving in Japan is really easy and satisfying. It enables the traveller to go at their own pace where and when they want to, without having to cart backpacks or suitcases and to worry about train and bus timetables.

Rail travel certainly has its place though and nothing beats travelling the main routes by the speedy shinkansen or city commuting by the amazing rail networks.

Our Brief

Guide books like the Lonely Planet guide and others will give a good grounding and enable you to source out places of interest but after a while you may need a lot more detailed travel information.

After many trips, we have come up with some handy tips for travellers who want to do what we are doing.

Driving in Japan

Introduction

We found that by travelling by car you can be master of your own destiny and can stop or sidetrack any time you want and the big benefit we found travelling by car is that you are not beholden to train timetables, not dragging your luggage through a railway station and fighting for a bit of space and a seat.

And you don’t need to pack up every night because you can throw your stuff in the car and move to your own timetable.  We found that it makes for stress-free travelling.

It all started when we read the posts by Dennis Kawaharada from The Honolulu Advertiser posted on June 6^th. 2004

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Jun/06/il/il08a.html

advocating holidays by car travel in Japan and we were encouraged to try it out. It sounded like quite a feasible way of seeing the more untravelled parts of Japan, which appealed to us. And coming from Australia we were off to a flying start by our driving on the same side of the road, unlike Dennis.

Our first trip coincided in part with one that he and his family had done namely to the Kii Peninsula, a relatively unpopulated triangle of land south of Nara which juts out to the south into the Pacific Ocean.

We wanted to travel to Koyasan, a mountain village which is the centre of the Shingon Buddhist sect in Japan, and visit the coast including a resort style area frequented by onsen-loving Japanese tourists at Katsuura.

Hire Cars

I found a hire car company called ToCoo! on the internet which we have found invaluable and have used them for all our car hire needs over the years. They are a central booking agency for a number of car hire companies including Mazda Hire, Nissan and Nippon hire companies and offer discounted rates which makes car hire very appealing and affordable.

They operate over the internet in English so I do all of the bookings before leaving homebase. They email the booking details and everything is costed out including drop off charges, if you are ending the trip at a different point. The total charge is made on pickup of the car.

Don’t forget that you will need an International Driving Permit issued in your country of origin and your current driver’s licence along with your credit card.

As an instance, on our last hire we paid 27,250Y or about $AUD330 for four days car hire of a Honda Fit out of Sendai. Which is very reasonable at just over $AUD80 per day. There is a whole range of car sizes to choose from. In the past we have hired a two litre four-door medium size sedan but realised that for two of us a smaller one around 1300 cc. was OK and even if the motor had more of a workout in the mountainous country, it was fine.

Also because some of the country roads can be narrow a smaller car is easier to pilot. And on the motorways they perform pretty well and can cruise at 100 – 120 km. per hour.

Make sure that you have a map of the pickup depot and one of the drop off depot if different. You can get this off the ToCoo! website.

http://www2.tocoo.jp/?file=rentcar_inbound/main         

Highways

The funny thing about the highways is that they have what appears to be a nominal speed limit of 80 km. per hour but most traffic zooms along in the 100 – 120 range without any obvious interference from the law.

The Japanese highway system is really magnificent. The tunnels and bridges even out the grade and make for easy motoring. Although the tolls are relatively high you can cut travel times enormously.  But travel is expensive anyway in Japan. The shinkansen, such a glorious way to travel quickly through the country at nearly 300 kph., is an irreplaceable transport at times, but costs run at about 10000Y ( AUD$125) for 300km.

Also, possibly because of the high tolls, the freeways are generally not crowded except for the main Osaka Tokyo route, and driving is pretty much stress-free.

At the entry to the freeway make sure you get the ticketed or manned gates and not the ETC gate which is an auto charge gate used by trucks and frequent travellers who have an electronic tag. If you aren’t sure, pull over to the side and watch for trucks and cars barrelling through without stopping.  Not that gate. You will usually get a dispensed ticket at the entry which you use at the exit by giving to the operator or by feeding into a collection machine. Either way the cost will be displayed electronically. Make sure you have money on hand that you can lay your hands on it easily. I usually use the compartment near the gear stick to store loose change but a lot of times you’ll need some notes too.

One invaluable companion that we use is the Road Atlas of Japan (Shobunsha) which has tables of the toll amounts on all of the freeways in Japan, so you know how much you are going to hand over each time before the event.

The tollbooth operators in Japan we have found to be one of the best testimonials for Japan. Always cheery and helpful even though we don’t speak the language. Save your best “Konichi-wa” for them.

I did make the mistake of going through an ETC gate near Tsuruoka in Tohoku recently and slowed to collect a non-existent ticket before I realised that there was a truck bearing down on me from behind, so I quickly sped through.  I was worried that when we got to our exit gate I would have no ticket to give the operator.

I think that they photograph the number plate of wrongdoers and broadcast the information to the toll gate operators down the line. When we exited at Yudonosan, I began to explain, but the operator gave me a big grin and waved me through. Crazy gaijin!  And later the same day after a second stint on the same freeway and after this time correctly entering, I handed in my ticket at our exit at Yonezawa and instead of collecting the money owed the operator said “Maru” meaning “nothing”, and waved us through. Maybe we got indemnity for the whole day!

Petrol

When you need petrol, you will find the staff at filling stations very attentive.  They wave you in and wave you out and if necessary stop the traffic so you can exit.

Best bet is to say “Man tan onegaishimas’, which means “full tank please”. They often ask “Genkit?” which means “is this cash?” Say “Hai”. First time I heard that I thought they were talking about what grade of petrol. Because “Genki” means “Healthy”, I though they meant healthy petrol like high octane, so I said “yes lets have the genki petrol, sounds good!” We still laugh about the genki petrol.

You don’t need to specify standard petrol, unleaded or other – the attendant will get it right.  It’s his job.

Petrol stations are pretty easy to find in the towns and at rest areas on the freeways. Sometimes there are no bowsers and the filling guns hang from the roof so just drive in under. You’ll get plenty of advice from the attendant on where to park!

Parking

When pre-booking accommodation on the internet at hotels or ryokans, I make sure that they know we need to park a car there for the night. This is often free but sometimes they make a charge of the order of $5 - $10. You normally won’t find a place to park your car in the street except in the smaller towns. If you need parking in a city or town there are usually plenty of automated park stations, where you collect a ticket and pay at the machine on the way out. Once you get the hang of these it is no hassle.

GPS

All hire cars are fitted with GPS navigation systems and have English spoken instructions. Programming them is difficult and something that we haven’t taken further. I understand that the best way is to punch in the phone number of a hotel or other place where you want to go. One car hire company did progam our destination in once but we didn’t find it that useful because we were visiting a number of destinations en route.

I did find however that it was useful to have the GPS road display on the screen as we drove along showing the highway number that we were on and the intersecting highway numbers coming up so that we could confirm our route. I turn the sound off.

We have found that if using a GPS you tend to overly rely on it and not take notice of the geographic features as you pass along which help you navigate your way.  Railways crossings, rivers crossings, landmarks and places of interest are all part of the travel experience rather than the destination itself. GPS focuses you on the destination, not on the trip.

Road Signage and Route Numbers

The highways right down to the minor roads all have route numbers which are invaluable in following your planned route. The major ones are all marked in The Road Atlas of Japan.

If you plan travelling on minor roads as we have a lot, I suggest before you go, get onto Google Earth, zoom in on your target area and you will find even the smallest roads will have route numbers which you can notate in your travel itinerary, so you just don’t get lost. Google Earth is just the most wonderful research tool, and if you haven’t got it, download it!

Signage on roads is generally very good. Cities have good signs in English and route numbers clearly marked.  Large route signs appear at every major intersection as you travel along a route so that is comforting to the navigator to confirm that you are on track. Even the small towns are pretty good and if you ever get stuck there is always a sign pointing to the Eki or railway station from where you can get your bearings via the atlas or pick up a tourist map at the station.

The little blue and white shields displaying the route numbers are the key to you not losing your way.

Another thing that takes a little getting used to. Knowing that you need to turn right say at the next intersection sometimes the street that you turn into, even being labelled a major road, may look like someone’s driveway! It’s probably not, so just do it!

Generally the traffic flows well, drivers are excellent and considerate and it is a pleasure to drive there. Truckies are also great and there are very few hoons about.

Research - A Recent Case Study  (Only go this far if you really want to!)

We discovered that the alleged best sushi restaurant in Japan was located in a small town called Shiogama near Sendai and adjacent to the port where they land the largest catch of tuna in Japan. The restaurant is called Kameki Zushi.

I had a rough description of where it was located so went into Google Earth and zoomed in on Shiogama. Using the symbol menu - the restaurants are denoted by a knife and fork symbol - I trolled through and found Kameki Zushi by trial and error. Clicking on the symbol revealed a Japanese link which brought up the website of the restaurant. It was all in Japanese but displayed a terrific picture menu and prices. And surprisingly it was not expensive. I printed off the menu and we took it with us.

Just so there were no mistakes I went into Google Street view and checked out what the restaurant looked like from the outside. With just a Kanji shingle outside a restaurant, it’s often not that easy to tell what it is, and whether it is a restaurant at all.

It all paid off beautifully – we drove past, recognised the exterior, did a u-turn, parked in their seven bay parking lot, used the printed menu to order a sashimi plate each, enjoyed the fantastic hospitality there and had one of the best meals of our lives!

The reason we chose to go to this effort is firstly, asking people on the ground there just doesn’t seem to work. I can pronounce Japanese place names pretty well, but once in Kanazawa we were looking for a goldleaf artisan shop called Sakuda.  We thought we were pretty close and I came across two locals sitting on the step to a house and I asked them the name of the shop.  They both looked blank so we wandered up and down and eventually found it - three doors away from where we asked the directions!

Secondly, the more self-sufficient you are, the less hassles you will have with finding things.

Japanese Address System

The Japanese address system is a tough one to get your head around. Each city (-shi) is divided into wards (-ku) districts (-chome), then blocks (-ban) and then the lot or building numbers, so an address might look like  5-2-15-8 Shinjuku Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160. The 160 is the post code.

The locals however have a lot of difficulty following their own system and use is commonly made of the local Koban or police station to help out.

Although unusual, the address system is a dead ringer for our old real property description used to describe real estate in Australia and which is used on all real estate contracts to singularly identify a property. However we have the street - number system as well.

I’ve mentioned Google Earth as a powerful research tool. Apart from Google Earth another very useful one is a website called Diddlefinger, which is a map site of all of Japan and which shows very good geographic detail and superimposed place names in English. This site was created by an American guy to help gaijins get around Japan and literally give “the finger” to Japanese maps, hence the name. This also has some other great features where you can enter a Japanese address in English script and it will plot it for you.  And even better, if you have a Japanese address in Kanji you can cut and paste it and it will again plot the address for you. Or you can send it to your iPhone.

So mostly the roads have no names. You could write a song about that. The influence of American occupation after the war however has resulted in names being given to some of the major roads and streets in Tokyo and other cities.

The Japanese are terrific at almost everything but are generally not good at maps.  Trying to locate a feature from a sketch map is commonly difficult. The convention of have north at the top of the map is not always observed and sometimes the plotting of hotels, restaurants etc is inaccurate or just plain wrong.

If you are in Tokyo, the Tokyo City Atlas, a pocket sized atlas is terrific and you can also easily identify the location of a property by its Japanese address too.

Traffic Lights

Traffic lights are a little different with most mounted horizontally rather than vertically but are generally hassle-free.

The only tricky bit I found was conflicting instructions sometimes.  It is possible to get a red light combined with three green arrows one to the left, one right and one straight ahead. Traffic proceeds ahead despite the red light being on. It seems the green forward arrow takes precedence. Cautiously go with the flow in this instance. Most times you will have no problems.

One benefit of being a pedestrian in the cities is that you commonly get music played when it’s time to cross the road, or even bird calls in parts of Osaka!  The tunes include the unlikely but popular“ Comin’ through the Rye”. I reckon other countries could go to school on that. Along with lots of other things like wash toilets!

It is interesting to note that the Japanese don’t call the green light a green light.  It’s blue.  I must admit it is slightly bluer than our lights but still looks green to me.  It’s comforting to know that red is still red!

Trips that we have done

1. Sept. 1998     Tokyo – Nikko – Tokyo

2. April  2007     Osaka - Tokyo - Kii Peninsula – Nara

3. Nov.  2007     Osaka – Fukuoka – Nagasaki - Kagoshima - Yakushima – Kyoto –Tokyo – Osaka

4. April 2008      Tokyo

5. Oct.  2008      Osaka – Tango Peninsula – Kanazawa – Takayama – Gifu – Kiso Valley – Kamikochi – Matsumoto – Tokyo - Kochi - Kyoto

6. Mar. 2009       Tokyo

7. Sept. 2009      Tokyo – Hakone – Tokyo

8. Oct.   2010      Tokyo – Sendai – Matsushima – Sakata – Yonezawa – Aizu Wakamatsu – Tokyo

Future Trips Planned

1. Hokkaido

2. Okayama – Shikoku – Inland Sea Islands – Mitsue

Researching Your Trip

The guide books are a good place to start, maybe a travel book on a trip someone has done, like Hokkaido Highway Blues, followed by the internet.

We try to do something unusual every trip and quite often were unaware of what that would be until we started looking at the internet.

On our Kyushu trip we incorporated the largest volcano in the world, Mt.Aso, the gorgeous cliffs in the Takachiho Gorge and the folk play and dancing at the temple, an island, Yakushima, where the rainfall is 30 metres p.a.( ! ) and has the oldest tree in the world at 6,000 years, a car ferry trip and Nagasaki which is one of the prettiest of Japan’s towns.

On another we went to Takayama for the spring festival, the Super Rindo highway through the mountains, Shirakawago with thatched houses, Gifu cormorant fishing, the Kiso valley and stayed in an ancient ryokan on the old Nakasendo Road where the ghosts of the old Daimyos travelled, stayed at a ryokan in the forest visited by monkeys bathing in the hot springs, and Kamikochi, a mountain resort.

So you’ll find out things along the way which you can incorporate in your trip.

Booking the accommodation is good fun and quite often we have found a rather special hotel or ryokan which has required a redesign of the itinerary.

One of these was the old Nara Hotel, steeped in character once frequented by the emporer and classic imperial architecture.  A little expensive but great for a night.

Another was the Fujiya Hotel in Hakone at Miyanoshita, again imperial style old-wordly and classic. They hopefully are still doing specials there for gaijins.

Booking hotels online is easy and the first thing you’ll notice is that the prices for the same accommodation varies enormously through different agencies.  You can save heaps just by being thorough.

I’ve found that the best booking agency in Rakuten and they have an English site which is  http://travel.rakuten.co.jp/en/  

They are efficient, good value and if you need to change bookings or cancel refunds are swift.

However, just check with the hotel’s own website. On occasion that can be the best price.

For ryokans which usually don’t have websites, the best booking agency is Japanese Guest Houses at  http://www.japaneseguesthouses.com/index.htm  

We usually do up a daily itinerary with route for the day with route numbers and rough distances, copy-and-pasted sightseeing items, restaurants, arts and crafts, local maps and hotel booking details including a map of the hotel’s location.  Don’t forget that one!

I recently did!  We were looking for the Hotel Takako in Aizu Wakamatsu and thought that we had got pretty close to it.  I called into a jewellery store and asked for the whereabouts of the Hotel Takako.  Both the guys came out into the street and looked up and down and scratched their heads, then one shouted “Hotel Takako!” It was less than 30 metres away. The name was in Kanji.

So if you have the day’s information with you it’s easy to carry and disposable after.

Before you go you might like to put the itineraries on a memory stick just in case.