How does a stupid white man navigate around northern Japan?

by philg

I’m planning on renting a car in Tokyo around August 5 and heading north to Hokkaido and tourist sights along the way.  My only previous trips to Japan have been via public transit and/or getting rides from locals.  Is there any hope of navigating around rural Japan if one (a) does not speak Japanese, and (b) cannot read Japanese characters?  I was hoping that perhaps there are GPS units that have all of their user interface in English.  So, for example, I could type in the name of a temple in Nikko and have the GPS guide me there with English voice prompts.  The fact that www.hertz.com won’t let you book a car at Narita and www.orbitz.com says “we’re sorry; an error has occurred” is worrisome.   Is a Japanese road trip not a good idea for a stupid white man?

15 thoughts on “How does a stupid white man navigate around northern Japan?”

  1. Navigating around rural Japan wouldn’t be too much of a problem, even without a GPS, as most road direction signs include romaji (i.e. English) text as well. A decent paper map would be enough to get around with. The problem would be getting out of Tokyo though – the roads there are a nightmare and confuse even the locals. If you do decide to rent a car, I would suggest getting out of central Tokyo before doing so. Renting a car from somewhere like Omiya or even Utsunomiya (north of Tokyo – in the direction you want to travel) would be much easier.

    As for GPS, most of the rental firms include GPS units in their cars but they are, unfortunately, only Japanese-speaking. I’ve heard of GPS units that can speak English too but only in high-end imported luxury cars (Jaguar, BMW, etc). Not sure you will have much luck finding them in a standard rental car. Someone else may know more about this.

    Anyway, hope this helps. If you’re passing through Sendai, feel free to drop in!

  7. The road signs on the major highways are generally in both kanji and roman characters. Once you get off the main roads, no guarantees. But as long as you have a map and whatnot, you can stop anywhere and just about anyone would be willing to help 2 foreigners who are lost.

    You can certainly rent a car with GPS, but the problem is that not only the map data in Japanese, but the controls of the unit are also Japanese. You can probably figure the basic controls out with the help of a Japanese person, but it won’t be nearly as helpful.

    I think you need to plan for 2 days (min.) to get to the top of Honshu. Besides car rental fees and room/board, expect $3-400 in highway tolls alone. Travelling by car is wonderful for the flexibility it affords you to get to places that trains wont take you, but it ain’t cheap like in the US.

  8. Thanks to all! This is really helpfulp.

    [Those highways must be pretty empty if they are reaming people out of $400! Maybe that’s not too much to pay for a private Interstate.]

  9. As others have said, the car navi’s are in Japanese (but they are really great). In theory you could have someone pre-enter the waypoints, with English names. You can enter and save points via zooming in on the map, entering addresses, entering phone numbers, or consulting the built-in “places of note” databases. Then you would just need to pick the various points for each leg of the journey. The interface is Japanese, but for simple tasks you could just make some notes and learn it.

    I would be more pessimistic than the others about traveling on roads without a navi. I used to have a motorcycle, and I can read Japanese, but the roads are really confusing, especially in a big city like Tokyo. I had a big scooter previously, with a navi on it, and that was much easier. One problem is that the roads in cities are engineered to prevent easy correction of mistakes: miss a turn and you can’t make a U-turn or circle around due to fiendishly located one-way streets. Outside the cities there would be fewer mistakes to make, however.

    Toyota and Nissan are the big rental car outfits in Japan (or rather, their rental car subsidiaries). I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Hertz or Avis.

    But trains are really the way to go here, trains and then taxis. Taxi service is amazing. And then rent a car for a day at your destinations if necessary. I sometimes take the midnight express from Shinjuku to Nagano prefecture, and catch a taxi at 4:00 a.m. from the station to the trailhead for backpacking in the Northern Japan Alps. Try that in the California Sierras.

    The most interesting places to stay would be small hotels, “pensions,” minshuku, or ryokan, but I doubt there is a good way to find or book them from outside Japan. JTB or Kinki Nippon Tourist are very helpful for this kind of thing … maybe JTB (Japan Travel Bureau) has overseas offices. Of course, now that I think about it, the smaller and more remote the lodging, the more of a problem you’ll have with the language. As your plans firm up, I’d be happy to look into more specific issues if it would help.

  10. I spent June in Toyko / Okinawa. If you’re headed to northern Japan, I’d consider getting another flight to Koyoto or perhaps the train. It will take you forever to get outside of Toyko, and will be a very intimidating “introduction” to the Japanese roadways. The 1.5 hour train ride from Yokota AB to Narita took 3 hours by bus, during low traffic volumes.

    Good luck!

    J.J.

  11. A couple of sites where you can book stays at Japanese hotels or ryokans in English:

    http://www.japaneseguesthouses.com/index.htm
    http://www.tabiplaza.net/japanhotels/

    If you’re interested in domestic flights within Japan, both ANA and JAL have special fares for tourists (from about USD100 per sector):

    http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2364.html
    http://www.jal.co.jp/yokosojapan/
    http://www.ana.co.jp/fare/int_visit/main.html

    If you have a Garmin GPS, there is an English map available which covers the middle area of Japan (basically the area between Tokyo and Osaka):

    http://www011.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mametaro/kanto-e.html
    http://www011.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mametaro/maps/Readme.txt

  12. I lived in Japan for a few years and the major cities are just no fun with a car. Parking hassles, toll ways etc. Much better to get to your destination by bullet train (shinkansen) and then rent a car or take a taxi to your destination. Japan really is best seen by train.

  13. Before you go, you might want to read, Dave Barry Does Japan.  I doubt the book will help you navigate around Japan, but it’s funny as hell — and provides some insight into the Japanese culture.

  14. There are english GPS systems, but I’ve only seen them for sale (http://www.micklay.com/content/view/10//) not for rent.

    Also, on the GPS front, if you set your handheld Garmin or Magellan unit to the Tokyo Datum, you can use the coordinates found in the URLs of the maps from http://www.jnto.go.jp/mapindex/E/index.html. Also, every ‘mappoint’-like map services like Yahoo’s also puts the coordinates of the selected place in the URL in Tokyo Datum format.

    And no, despite the costs, the highways are far from open but you certainly get a better chance at finding the open road in Hokkaido rather than on the mainland.

  15. Go read “The Roads to Sata” by Alan Booth. An account by an Englishman who walked from one end of Japan to another, it covers northern Japan in loving detail – lots of humorous and interesting encounters with the locals.

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