1 Plan your route carefully in advance
Attractions and heritage sites are spread out in Japan. They can be in remote places too. For example the culturally important art complex of Naoshima is on an island and in Kyoto temples are scattered all over the city. Meanwhile the famous Fushimi Inari Shrine with its thousands of vermillion Torii gates is in a suburb, while the bamboo groves of Arashiyama would be a long hike out of town. Buy a map before you go, study it and plan carefully.
Vermillion Torii at the temple of a thousand gates near, but not that near Tokyo.
2 Book your hotels up front
Plan and book your hotel nights too. Japan isn’t set up for walk in bookings. Last minute is not part of the culture and trying to bag a bed for the night on the hoof is likely to send reception staff into a flurry. But the good news is that there are plenty of quality hotels and apartments bookable in advance. We enjoyed stays ranging from a string of Crowne Plazas to traditional ryokans and budget hotels.
3 Relax; in some ways it’s easier than Europe
Roads in Japan are safe, safe, safe. We never felt vulnerable on the roads or at junctions. Cities are ordered around traffic light systems and it’s very easy to find your way around them unlike the UK with its confusing one way systems and city centre toll charges. Roads in cities are busy but out in the countryside it’s a different matter. We had a great trip out to Mount Fuji where we swam in its five lakes. See our video below. The driving in this extraordinary landscape was almost as rewarding as our dip:
4 File the phone numbers for hotels or attractions
Gather the phone numbers for your hotels in a document. This may sound illogical but phone numbers are the best way to programme the sat nav. If you don’t have a hotel then find the phone number for a local temple or attraction nearby and ask a local to direct you the last few metres.
5 Pump your car hire company for info
Glean as much information as you can from the car hire people about your car before you leave them. Find out exactly what petrol it takes and what the symbols for it look like. Get a map from them or a sat nav code of the pick up so you can drop the car back without hassle at the end. Anything that you can do up front will mean less stress on the road and will make you family holiday to Japan a little easier.
Click below for the next five tips.
Goodness what an amazing trip! Japan is somewhere I’ve always discounted, or put the the ‘maybe one day’ end of my bucket list, but you’ve made it sound not only doable, but actually somewhere I would love visiting with the kids. I’m always wanting to give my family new experiences, and Japan would be so different from our norm. But when you have young children you want to do it safely, so it’s brilliant to know that we’d get that in Japan. I’m totally sold!
Adore the roadworks bollards – I’d always assumed the Japanese would be a bit staid, but clearly they have a much better sense of humour than us!
[…] Familien zum Reisen an. Ihre Krabbelkinder sind inzwischen Teenager. Sie waren für mehrere Wochen in Japan unterwegs und haben unsere Fragen sehr ausführlich beantwortet – thanks a lot, […]
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I would love to do this but feel anxious about driving on left side of the roads since I am American.
James, it’s something you quickly adapt to. Living in the UK we often have the opposite challenge when visiting Europe, switching from left to right, and it’s much easier than you may think.
James – many years ago a dear friend of mine (a retired flight attendant – who had traveled all over the world in her career) shared this super easy to remember tip to make sure you’re always driving on the correct side of the road. That tip is this: “remember that the front passenger seat should always be next to the pavement” – “passenger to the pavement”- “P to P” for short! You can’t get it wrong if you remember this one simple tip. No matter whether the car is left hand drive or right hand drive – or what side of the road you’re driving on – the “P to P” rule will always be right. I live in New Zealand which is a right hand drive country but my work takes me to the USA regularly – and I have never had an issue thanks to this simple tip. Hope that helps 🙂
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