Top 5 Resources For Planning Road Trips In Japan

It is not easy to plan a road trip in Japan. You need to know what to see, where to go, if the places are open, and what it would cost to get in. I am trying to make it easier with these pages. The selection and comments here are, of course, my own.

So here are five resources that can help you plan a road trip in Japan.

1. This Site (of Course)

I do not mean to brag, but there are very few places that will tell you how to plan a roadtrip in Japan, and even fewer who will tell you what you should not do when you plan a roadtrip in Japan. You can not find any other site written by someone who has written a book about driving in Japan (I went through the books available in Amazon, and am honored to be the only one to write a book that is not only about taking the drivers license test). You can read my top 10 tips for renting a car in Japan here.

Especially a roadtrip from the Tokyo area. And I have yet to find another website (even in Japanese) that give you tips about five different road trips in Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa, or Ibaraki – the prefectures that consist the Kanto region. Actually, I should include Tokyo as well, because it is not just a city, it is a prefecture as well. Nobody else will tell you what you should not do when you plan a road trip, and of course I also tell you what you should think about when you are planning a road trip in Japan.

2. Google Maps

I am well aware that the choice of mapping app is very personal. Some people will love Navitime, others navigate the world using Apple Maps or Bing Maps. Personally, I use Google Maps.

Google did a fantastic job of mapping the world (but mostly cities), and over the years they have purchased and created more maps that give them amazing coverage.

But the important difference is really the reviews – and the facts about the different places. There are millions of reviewers around the world, giving their opinions on anything from parking lots to stone age monuments, but mostly restaurants.

The facts include opening times, and at least in Japan Google verifies the opening times. But they still miss a lot of significant information, such as entrance fees. Luckily, the Google information typically includes at least phone number and web site, although frustratingly often there is no information at all, especially when the place is branded “historical landmark”.

Google Maps gives you a number of facts about the place you are looking at.

Google Maps, amazing though it may be, has several shortcomings. It sometimes has problems with the transcription of Japanese words and names (in particular addresses), and it does not allow you to search on phone numbers (something you can do in most navigation systems, although frustratingly often you end up at the old address of the phone number).

One major shortcoming, that Google creates themselves, is that recommendations often are paid advertisements – but sometimes not. When they are not, you want to see the facts about the place.

But on the whole, Google Maps is the best planning tool around for creating road trips.

3. Drive Japan

You can plan your road trip many ways, but you need a lot of facts and information to get it right. For starters, knowing about your destination, where to pick up a car, and so on.

The Drive Japan road trip planner is a great idea, but has a ling way to go.

Drive Japan is a road trip planner, compiling road trips from different itineraries, web sites, etc. the idea is great, but it is still in beta version, and even so the facts compiled are somewhat scarce. To be nice.

With a little bit more effort, this could be a very useful application. But as it is, it just hints at the potential.

4. Camping Car (Campervan, RV) Rental Companies

You may think that the Japanese roads are too narrow for a recreational vehicle, but a Japanese campervan (or camping car as it is known in Japanese) is adapted to the roads in Japan. Even the biggest (which sleep eight) are designed to fit in tunnels and be possible to drive anywhere you could drive a small truck.

Doing your road trip in a camping car has several advantages. You have complete freedom regarding where to go and where to drive. It is cheaper than a hotel night, even in the simplest hotel, for five people. Everyone and everything is always there. And while the Japanese RVs are wrapping everything around a minimal space like a piece of origami, there is space for everything. They do not use much gas, either.

But renting a camping car in Japan assumes automatically that you will stay away for more than a couple of days. So you need to plan more carefully than if you are planning a day trip. I broke out the camping car tips into a separate article.

By planning your overnight stays ahead you can find great (free) locations to stop overnight, where there are toilets and often simple restaurants or convenience stores nearby. With toilets, because Japanese RVs either do not have toilets at all, or they are locked. Michi no Eki (道の駅) are favorite locations, and nowadays there are also parking spaces dedicated to campervans in many places. Often connected to a more traditional camping site.

There are several firms that provide camper van rental, but there are a few that stick out, and not just because they offer service in English, including a hotline to call in case you run into trouble.

5. Articles with Road Trip Tips

If you have ever used paper guidebooks, chances are that you have used the Lonely Planet guidebooks. But nowadays, paper guidebooks are old history and something that belongs in a library.

The articles at the Lonely Planet site are pretty good, but can not compare with the paper books.

The website is trying to catch up with the old guidebooks. But it is close to impossible, as you can see in this article about 10 great roadtrips in Japan. It sprawls here and there when they try to cover everything from Hokkaido to Kyushu, and everything in between. But the tips are great, although very high-level.

The Japan National Tourist Organization (JNTO) have collected a number of useful tips for those planning to go on a road trip in Japan. They also include a few sample itineraries.

The Japanese National Travel Organization has collected a number of road trip tips.

The road trips they suggest are fairly generic, and also dependent on the season. If you want to experience the fall colors or cherry blossoms there are many itineraries to choose from. Japan has hundreds of places where you can go to see the changing seasons – many of them without also seeing the crowds that you often get at the more famous sights.

The resources listed in the articles above partially overlap the “10 Best Road Trips In Japan” from the Japan Wonder Travel Blog.

Japan Wonder Travel Blog lists their choice of 10 Japan road trips.

As so often is the case, the list is compiled from many sources and each road trip merits less than a few hundred words, even though there are hundreds of things to see on each trip.

Culture Trip tells you about different road trips in Japan, but there could be more facts.

This is also the case with “The Ultimate Japanese Road Trip Tips”, created by Culture Trip, who compiles itineraries for travelers around the world. They provide a few basic facts and a few road trip suggestions around Japan.

Did you find this useful? Then chances are that you will find my book “Driving In Japan” even more useful. You can read the table of contents here, and get the book right away here.