Driving in Japan

Japan has one of the best train systems in the world, do you even need to drive here? And if you do, why would you even want to drive? Still, there are places in Japan a train won’t take you, at least not easily. And that’s how I found myself behind the wheel for the first time in Japan.

Exciting, yet quite nerve-wrecking. That is how I would quickly sum up how I felt about renting a car for the first time with my friends from university. It was the second month into the exchange, and it was the first week we got off from school. A great time to leave our study books behind and explore Japan. We decided on going into rural Japan and visit Iya Valley, a remote mountainous valley in Shikoku, the smallest of the four main islands. No matter how good the trains are in Japan, to get here efficiently, you need a car.

Iya valley, Shikoku, Japan

So it was decided, we would rent a car and we will explore the beautiful mountain ranges that Japan has to offer. Quickly after we started planning,  it turned out that none of my buddies ever even considered that they needed a crucial piece of paper called an international driving license to even be allowed to drive in Japan.  That is the point where the excitement started to change to a bit more nervousness as I was the one appointed to drive the whole trip, in a typical Japanese minivan (show picture) in the mountains of Japan as a 20 year old Dutch student (I am mentioning the Dutch part, because some of you might know, the Netherlands is incredibly flat and we can call the smallest bump in the road a hill).

the type of car we drove

Not only the mountains were new of course, in Japan you also have to drive on the left. Once again, I have only had my driver’s license for 2 years at this point and it is not like I had driven all that much at the time. So here I was, an inexperienced driver, driving a minivan, through the mountains of Japan, on the left side of the road, while not understanding more than 10 words of Japanese, let alone even being able to read road signs in Japanese. I hope you understand how the excitement changed to nervousness as soon as it came out that I was the only driver. But that didn’t stop us! We wanted to see the beautiful nature we had read so much about, and we wouldn’t let anything get in the way of that. All I wanted was a good front-seat passenger who would help me initially navigate the busy streets of Osaka, onto the Highway (through the toll roads), and into the mountains of Iya Valley.

Getting the car

There is one mistake everyone will make the first time they rent a car in a country where they drive on the left; they turn on their window wiper instead of their turn signal (and it most likely will be more often than once). As they are also on the other side, it will take a little bit of time before you get used to this. But that is a small thing compared to having to remember, STAY ON THE LEFT. Clearly you can follow the other cars, but there was that sliver of anxiety that at some point you would forget to stay left and go back to the right. Anyway, as we drove off the rent-a-car lot and turned right (**window wiper starts**), we were ready to start our adventure.

The first hour on the roads of Japan

So here we are, driving on the roads of Japan, I wouldn’t say that my nerves immediately disappeared, but honestly you get used to it surprisingly quickly. And the Japanese roads are great in the city. The drivers are generally calm and follow the rules. The navigation system, both in car and on the phone give directions clearly (there are also quite a lot of signs in English). Of course, we missed a few exits here and there, but that’s okay, we would take the next exit, we are on holiday and mistakes as such are bound to happen. The only thing I really needed to get used to was that, because the steering wheel was on the right, I drove a bit too much on the left of the lane. But after being corrected by my front-seat passenger a few times, it was all good and we were on our way to Iya Valley.

In the next post I will talk more about Iya Valley, driving in the mountains and one incredibly cool accommodation. But for now I want to end this post by telling everyone who isn’t sure about renting a car in Japan, just do it, especially if you want to visit rural areas and see more authentic side of Japan. The roads are safe, GPS works great (even in rural areas), the drivers aren’t aggressive and it gets you into the less visited regions. It is incredibly enjoyable to go stop somewhere and see no other tourist while you stumble across a cool hidden gem.