Rental car vs trains/buses

Hello everyone!

We are a couple travelling from Kyoto to Kawaguchiko stay a few nights then to Takayama few nights then to Kanazawa few nights then back to Kyoto. We are contemplating wether to rent a car or take public transport. We have two medium size suite cases and a carry on bag. Trains in Japan are fantastic, but for some reason it shows me absurd travel times between my destinations on google maps or Hyperdia and always shows car is faster. Is renting a car in Japan best avoided or actually more convinient? Driving in cities is nightmarish I understand but what about intercity for my places of travel. The information available on the web is not only volumes but contradictory as well. So please any suggestions or recommendations to simplify my thoughts would be of great help.

Thank you
Svapnil.

You will still get contradictory information on this forum also. Mainly due to the millions of factors that go into each situation. And in the end you need to decide which of those factors effect you.

Trains and buses are always gonna be slower. That is nothing new. Driving will be quicker "IF" you know where you are going.

Most attempt to drive to save money. But 2 peeps in 1 car isn't a huge cost savings. You need to add in fuel, hotel parking spaces, tolls, insurance etc into your equations for hiring a car.

For your places you wish to travel, and with the limited info you have provided. Those places are all easily accessible by public transport. So no need for a car.

I agree with the previous poster. In general, I tend to find trains (specifically the Shinkansen) as the fastest way of getting around Japan. Locations which are far from one another and don't have much in the way of public transport (highway bus or train) tends to be better for cars. Areas that come to mind include Shikoku, the Eastern side of Kyushu, Noto Peninsula and the like.

It is true that Kamikochi does not have fantastic transport links, but everything is reasonably close together so a car is not that helpful. A highway bus will also not be that much slower than driving your own car. Plus your less likely to get lost driving there if you take the bus :-)!

Do note that driving out of major cities can be excruciatingly slow. I still remember it taking 90 minutes to drive from Kanazawa Station to the outskirts of Kanazawa on a late Tuesday morning....

I'm going to Japan next week and will use public transport around Osaka, then drive a car between Sakai and Asuka. I'll then drive from Wakkanai to Sapporo with many stops along the way. I find that trains in the Kanto plains & general Kansai area (apart from Kumano area) are in general better than driving...

The only leg of your trip that I would consider driving is Kawaguchiko to Takayama.

However:
- Google driving times are WAY too optimistic. Especially for local roads, and especially in mountainous areas.
- you'll probably have to pay a big one-way hire fee
- there's apparently a bus that does that route

A friend and I rented a car in Japan once and for the destinations we wanted to visit it was much faster, but at the time the shinkansen stopped in Hachinohoe and we visited quite a few places only reachable by bus.

Japanese tolls are quite high. Tohoku was having a special on toll charges when we rented the car and they were substantially discounted. My friend lived in Japan at the time and so couldn't get a rail pass, so this was cheaper over all. Routes always took longer than anticipated, even on expressways and we didn' hit a lot of traffic. Navigating in small cities even was not fun. We were mostly visiting areas that didn't charge parking and neither of the two places we stayed charged for parking. I think we only paid for parking in Kakunodate and Hirosaki and we were in both for only a few hours.

You didn't mention what time of year your planning to visit and places in the mountains (like I suspect the shortest route between Kawaguchiko to Takayama) can get snow. We were driving at the end of April near Towadako and got caught in a blizzard with white out conditions.

Personally, I would take the bus. I took a highway bus between Tsuroka and Yamagata and it was quite pleasant and felt a lot safer than if I had driven the same route.

Do the long distance by train and then the shorter distances with bus/car. Part of the reason you get crazy travel times is that there is not a direct train between some of those locations.

I also agree about the hugely optimistic car travel times Google generates. My experience driving in Japan is it takes way longer - even on express-ways/toll roads.

Sorry I read the wrong town. It was Kawaguchiko and not Kamikochi. I don't know enough about getting from Kawaguchiko to Takayama so listen to the others comments instead...