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If you’ve been to Japan, or even if it’s still on your must-visit list, Japan has a reputation for busy, crowded, bustling cities. There is so much to see that it’s easy to clock 25,000+ steps a day walking around and that’s even with catching their sprawling public transportation systems.
Being so close to Australia (only a 9-hour flight for us on the Gold Coast), Japan is the international destination lately. Not sure about you, but my Instagram Explore page is 90% Japan (and maybe 10% dogs) and it seems like everyone is going or is planning their next visit.
We all generally know the highlights and top places to visit - Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo, Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Dotonbori in Osaka, and the list goes on.
If you’ve ticked these off your list, or if you’re looking for a different Japanese experience, I would suggest making a road trip out of it.
In April 2024, I spent a month on the road, living out of a kei car, dodging the major cities and took it to the back streets of Japan (unfortunately, no drifting was involved for me). Here is a very rough map of where I went:
Just a quick few notes on my itinerary:
- I did visit Nagoya (big city) but it was to see the nearby Formula 1 race. Also, this isn’t normally on the standard tourist map to visit but certainly worth it!
- Although it looks like I went through Osaka, I can confirm I did not visit Osaka during this trip, just drove around it.
- I did visit Hiroshima during this trip (also a big city) but it was to visit my parents, so that’s a fairly good reason I think.
Now onto my top 5 reasons you should road trip Japan.
1. See the hard to get to spots and meet locals
Even though Japanese public transportation is incredible, it is still difficult to travel to some places outside of the cities and that’s where a car comes in handy. In a lot of these small towns I visited, there were not many other Western tourists, and it was during this time in Japan, I felt that I saw what really felt like Japan to me. I got to meet with and chat very broken Japanese with locals, eat cheap but delicious meals from family-owned restaurants and see corners of Japan most people don’t. I recently met a Japanese person in Australia and when I told them I visited Mie Prefecture, where they were from, they said I was the first non-Japanese person they knew who had visited here.
2. Free Camping
When I first began my road trip, I was a little shocked by the price of campsites - some reaching ¥5,000 (approx $50AUD) for a very basic campsite. In Japan, a lot of the campsites are privately owned, not by the government like in Australia, so I guess they can set their price. But, I found out there are a ton of free campsites all across Japan! If you search “Free campsites Japan” you can find so many for the area that you’ll be heading or there are Facebook groups too with options. Fair warning, most of the information was really good but some was a little outdated. One time I reached a campsite at the top of a mountain road and it turned into a car park. Made for some creative pitching with my non-freestanding tent!
3. Onsens everywhere!
One tricky factor about being on the road and not staying in hotels every night is showering. Luckily, Japan has public onsens in almost every town! For approximately ¥1000 ($10AUD) I could use the public onsen to shower and enjoy a soak in the natural spring water afterwards. If you don’t know already, most onsens request no clothing in the bath or while showering, so you’ve got to be comfortable going au naturel.
Oftentimes in the big cities, the onsens aren’t naturally heated water with the properties of true onsen water. Some onsens I visited would have multiple baths with different benefits like higher magnesium and calcium - I even went in a red onsen bath which had high levels of iron. If you’ve got tattoos, don’t stress too much. I saw people in the onsens with tattoos and it didn’t seem to be an issue - I found it was more frowned upon in the big cities than the smaller towns.
4. Convenient stores
Basically, everyone has heard of how great the convenient stores are in the cities with one almost on every block and it’s pretty similar in the countryside. Although they aren’t on every block, you can normally find a 7/11, Lawson or Family Mart in most towns. With these, you can find heaps of snacks and tasty meals on the road - they even serve fresh ramen, pasta, curry and more - as well as provide a spot to ditch some rubbish and use as a rest stop. Outside of the cities, using the bathroom is not restricted to customers only, but it’s normally impossible to resist grabbing a little sweet treat for the road during a pit stop. Unlike some servo station bathrooms in Aus, the ones in Japan aren’t straight out of a nightmare - they’re always clean and normally have the famous heated toilet seats.
5. Spontaneity
The awesome part of road trips is the flexibility you have. When we set off on the trip, we knew we had to be in Hiroshima by a certain date to meet my parents, but other than that, we didn’t plan more than a couple of days ahead at a time. Along the way, we would look at attractions on Google Maps and see what popped up and some of my favourite and most interesting places were found this way. Not Instagram’s explore page, not some blog (oops, did a fourth wall just break?) or Tiktok video. It was exciting and fun not knowing exactly where I was going to be sleeping in 2 days time. Sometimes it was camping on the beachfront of the Seto Inland Sea, camping on a mountainside with monkeys amongst mandarin trees and others it was camping in the rain, with our wet tent, but happy about where we were.
I hope if you get the chance, you can explore more than just the tourist highlights of Japan, because there are so many more highlights to see.
A couple of things to note:
- Unfortunately, I did not pack my tent and sleeping bag from back home (which I missed terribly) so if you’d like to road trip, I’d recommend bringing good quality camping gear from home as I did encounter some cold rainy weather.
- Tolls on Japanese roads are super common and can be expensive. Sometimes, it is good to weigh up the options on Google Maps to see the toll route vs non-toll route to see if it is worth it. I found it was about 50/50 if we did tolls or not, depending on where we were going.
- Be prepared to get lost at some point! Although the road signs are also in English, we did take some wrong turns along the way. Make sure you have offline Google Maps downloaded or pocket wifi/a data sim to renavigate when needed.
- Japan requires an international licence and it must be a physical copy - not digital. You can grab one at RACQ for around $50 but be sure to get it before your trip as you can't get them once arriving in Japan.
If you need any further help with your next adventure, don't hesitate to come in store to chat with our experts or shoot us a message online if you have any questions! We’ll see you outdoors. Share your adventures with us on Instagram at @wildearthaustralia and use the hashtag #MyWildEarth to be featured.
