Campervanning in Japan
It’s easier than you probably think, and gives you access to more of Japan than you ever imagined.
Why would you? Japan is famous for it’s public transport, so why would you hire a vehicle and drive?
Well, Japan is famous for its efficient and effective public transport, and almost anything you read about traveling in Japan will talk about the great Japan Rail Pass available to foreign visitors. Heck, we have even used one ourselves on a past trip. However, it is not some magical, access-all-areas answer to Japan. For a start, it covers only Japan Rail lines. As in the JR company lines. It doesn’t cover any other rail company lines — for example, in Tokyo it doesn’t cover the Tokyo Metro or Toei Subways. Nor does it cover bus travel.
Even if you are not just relying on the Japan Rail Pass and are just using public transport in general, once you start heading north of Tokyo* the public transport starts to thin out. Trains and buses are a lot less frequent, and frankly don’t go everywhere. Exploring Hokkaido by public transport is possible, but it is going to mean a lot of planning and tight schedules. And hanging around for half a day waiting for the bus if you plan to go anywhere remote. So it depends on where you want to go. On our latest trip a lot of the places we wanted to explore would not have been possible to go to with public transport, or would have been but would have meant a lot of hanging around. With our own transport it was a lot easier.
But driving in Japan is really difficult, right?? Like all the signs are in a different language, and they drive on the other side of the road and everything.
Well, we come from Australia originally so actually, we think they drive on the correct side of the road 😀 And as someone who has had to make the change themselves, you get used to driving on ‘the other’ side of the road pretty quickly.
The great thing about road signs in Japan is that place names are pretty much all in Romaji (that is roman script aka the script English is written in) as well as Japanese. In a lot of areas direction type signs are as well. There are a few signs that are different for foreign drivers (such as stop signs) but most others are self explanatory. And you will never, ever not know in advance when roadworks are coming up in Japan — there are signs, then flashing lights, then usually a guy with a flag. Trust me, you will know.
Depending on what country you are from is going to make a difference as to what kind of license paperwork you need, so check out this page for information as to how it affects you.
Make sure that the van you hire has GPS in a language you understand. On the GPS issue — a LOT of different GPS apps are pretty useless in Japan (I’m looking at you Sygic). We had an ipad with internet access and Google Maps, which seemed to work best.
One thing you have to take in to account — speed limits in Japan are amazingly low. In towns the speed is between 30 and 50 km/h The speed on open roads is 80 km/h Motorway speeds can be a minimum of 40km/h usually though they have a minimum of 50 km/h and a maximum of 100 km/h.
Those motorways with 100 km/h are usually the incredibly expensive toll roads. And if it is wet, or windy, or the planets aren’t aligned right, the speed will be set around 70 km/h. I can say that most Japanese people drive 20 km above the official speed limit, but I am not about to tell you you should do that too.
Oh, and how expensive are those tolls I mentioned? Here are some figures from a table on Japan-guide.com. See for yourself (personally, I think these are maybe a bit out of date as they look low to me):
Tokyo — Osaka (550km): ¥12,000
Nagoya — Hiroshima (10,500): ¥12,000
Aomori — Nagoya (1050km): ¥20,500
So see, it is expensive to drive around Japan, so why would you choose campervanning in Japan?
The cost for three people — two adults and one 12 year old — to buy Japan Rail Passes, take a bit of non-JR public transport and stay in average to budget hotels for 20 days actually works out as more expensive than going by campervan. And in the costs of going by campervan I include:
- campervan hire (including extra insurance)
- excess kilometres
- petrol
- parking
- tolls (we didn’t use a lot of toll roads but we used some)
How is this possible? Firstly, hotels are pretty expensive in Japan. Especially if you have more than two people.** So having our own accommodation along with transport is a saving.
Secondly, now that the kid is 12 he is an adult when it comes to a lot of things, including the Japan Rail Pass. So three adult Japan Rail Passes for 21 days = £ 1305 (or US$ 1698 or AU$ 2238). Adding that plus the cost of hotels (leaving aside the cost of non-JR travel just for now) adds to more than the costs of the campervan. Of course, it is going to depend on your situation — if you are on your own, it probably isn’t going to be cheaper. But it is worth doing the maths before saying no.
So you have me interested in campervanning in Japan but I don’t speak Japanese. How am I going to hire a van?
There are a few companies that hire vans in Japan and conduct their business in English — the communications, the contracts, everything you need to deal with. We used Japan Campers and would highly recommend them. Their prices were reasonable, they were good at getting back to emails and the whole process was pretty painless.
Great, got a van. Where can I park it?
If you have a van that is 5 metres long or less (which the standard campervan like a Mazda Bongo is) you can park and sleep anywhere that is legal parking in Japan. Be aware that in most cities parking is going to be paid parking, but one of the great things about Campervanning in Japan is the system of Michi-no-Eki:
Each Michi-no-Eki has three distinct features:
“Refresh” — Rest facilities that include free 24-hour parking and restrooms.
“Community” — Regional co-operation where cultural centers, tourist attractions, recreation and other local development facilities promote interaction with the region.
“Information” — Where road, tourist and emergency care information is readily available.
Now these places range from amazing — with great restaurants, onsen, shops and tourist information — to pretty basic. But you will always be guaranteed parking and clean toilets open 24/7.
While you will sometimes come across Michi-no-eki in or very close to the town centre — such as in Asahikawa — often they are out of town a bit. Which means if you want to spend some time of an evening enjoying the local night life, or having dinner at an Izakaya and having a few drinks, you will need to consider parking in town (Japan is VERY STRICT on the no drinking and driving thing. As in if you are going to drive, you do not drink. Full stop.) The good news is that you can park in pretty much any parking lot and sleep the night legally. We tried to be fairly discrete about it, and never had problems. We did not ever try undercover parking/multi-storey parking lots, but parked in plenty of city centres. While not super-cheap, most of these parking lots have a system where after so many hours it is a flat rate for the day or night (for example from 20:00–08:00).
We have also read of people parking and sleeping in konbini parking lots though we never did that ourselves.
Photo credit: GoBongo.co.uk on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NCHow am I going to get clean?
Not a lot of michi-no-eki have shower blocks. Of the 1093 michi-no-eki, only 31 are listed as having showers. However, 145 are listed as having a hot spring (onsen), and many more are located very close to one. If you find yourself at a location without an onsen, most Japanese towns will have a public bath (sento) that you will be able to avail yourself of (I wrote all about them in a previous story). Our only issue was getting our towels dry each night after bathing — eventually we organised a system where towels were draped over the steering wheel and hung through the handles above the doors. It usually worked, but you may want to consider bringing quick-dry sports towels or the like (we had peshtemals)
What about my laundry?
Japan is covered in coin laundries. The only issues you are going to have is finding them (but there’s a range of apps for that) and then keeping yourself occupied for a few hours while your stuff washes and dries.
How about eating? Can I cook in the campervan?
Well, it is like the shower — some bigger mobile homes will come with cookers, but campervans are too small. We were provided with a small camping oven and utensils/pans/plates etc. but never used them. Breakfast was usually baked goods or anman from the konbini (7–11 has the best coffee fyi), lunch was at a restaurant and then dinner was often at an izakaya or the food options at the michi-no-eki. Eating out in Japan can be a relatively cheap affair — but if your budget is tight don’t forget that most konbini will have hot water and microwaves.
I hope this article has inspired you to get out and hit the open road in Japan. If you have any questions feel free to send me a message at https://shor.by/9AZd
*This is also the case in a lot of the South of Japan too.
**Yes, I know about AirBnB but a) I have ethical problems with AirBnB and b) doing a quick comparison most AirBnB places that will take 3+ people are not that much cheaper than a cheap hotel and c) a lot of the places we went didn’t have AirBnB options. So.just.don’t.
