8D 8N itinerary

Hello all, I need advice on my forthcoming trip to nagoya. I�fm bringing my elderly parents, one on a wheelchair and the other can walk short distances with a walking stick. We are touching down on 27 Nov morning & leaving on 5 Dec morning.

I�fm torn between renting a car to tour the Nagoya area(Takayama, Kanazawa, Mie, Gifu etc.) and getting the JR passes to bring them to Osaka, Kyoto & even Tokyo. Will taking other train lines be another option?
This is our 2nd time visiting Japan, the first time we did a 100% self-drive trip in Hokkaido during one summer.

My concern this time round will be toll road charges and parking problems/charges.

If we take the trains, we may miss out many nice sights that are further away from the train stations. Also, I remember my past experience in taking the airport train at Sapporo station was not smooth as we could not get help with moving my wheelchair-bound mom up the train.

Please advise me on how I can bring them around without much suffering to them. I�fll be very grateful. Thanks everyone.

I recommend to rent a car. It will make it much easier for your parents to get around, and it will likely be cheaper.

Details depend on what specific sights you want to visit and how easy it is to park there. Parking is not usually a problem outside of the large cities. Parking in Takayama and Kanazawa isn't usually too challenging unless you travel on particularly busy days.

Yes, in your case a rental car and sticking to smaller destinations sounds like a good idea.

Enjoy your trip to Japan!

Hi!

I think with 8 nights you need to really think about your itinerary, I think the list of destinations you have is overly ambitious unless your plan is to see as much of Japan as possible in a car and not leave the car. Takayama is still a 2-3 hour drive from Nagoya and Kanazawa is then a further drive. I could see fitting in Kyoto, but I don't see fitting in Tokyo. Think about it this way: 2 nights Nagoya, 2 nights Takayama, 2 nights Kanazawa and 2 nights Kyoto and then trying to add 2 nights in Tokyo is just going to be impossible, (it's an over 5 hour drive by expressway between Kyoto and Tokyo and another 4 hours plus from Tokyo back to Chubu Airport. This assumes no traffic. ) There is no driving pass that includes within central Tokyo. JEP https://global.w-nexco.co.jp/en/jep/ covers most of the country, but a CEP is considerably cheaper and will cover most of what you can reasonably expect to do as you already are driving a minimum of 2-3 hours each day you change locations without adding in places outside Chubu.

If you drop Tokyo and environs, you could look into a CEP Pass and one of their routes:
https://hayatabi.c-nexco.co.jp/cep/en/

I've never personally used this pass, but I have used the TEP Pass for Tohoku and had a splendid time and I plan to get a TEP again. It took a little while to get it from my particular office but I used translation software until the office figured it out. I would definitely do it again, except maybe start and end my driving in a different city.

Unlike with TEP, CEP offers some potential driving routes for touring. I guess you would need to check which tourist sights are accessible to wheel chairs, since I know some places are not. (example: original castles tend to not be wheel chair accessible, while museums tend to be.) You also do need to look to see which routes might have snow since I know some routes go through the mountains and based on closing days for Kamikochi, I would think some of the drive between Hirayu and Matsumoto has the potential for snow. I did my driving in the Summer, but even so, I passed several places on the expressway where snow tires were recommended.

You can pay additional to include Kyoto on the CEP Pass But you would need to stay someplace there that includes an option for parking and it will definitely cost additional.

If you want to go to Osaka you can either pay out of pocket for the tolls between Kyoto and Osaka, or try to avoid toll roads between them. I know my rental car had that option though I never used it.

Good luck!