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About Chasing Cherry Blossoms

We’re a couple based in Singapore who have been going back to Japan for over twenty years — and who long ago stopped doing it by train.

Who we are

Michael — I first went to Japan for work in 2004. Our company’s regional office was in Tokyo, and as Regional Manager I was back there several times a year until 2016. That was a decade of Tokyo seen from meeting rooms, hotel lobbies and the Yamanote line — which taught me the cities properly, and taught me almost nothing about the rest of the country.

That changed in 2017, when Hui Yi came with me for the first time and Japan stopped being a work destination. Two years later we rented a car for the first time, and the whole country opened up.

Hui Yi — Hui Yi is the reason the food coverage on this site exists. She plans what we eat; I plan what we drive. It’s a division of labour that has taken us to strawberry farms in Toyama and Kumamoto, a crab market in Shinminato, an eel restaurant in Odawara, and more roadside stations than either of us has counted.

[[ OPTIONAL: a photo of the two of you somewhere in Japan. A real one. It does more for trust than another paragraph. ]]

Where we’ve actually driven

We think it matters that you know what a travel site’s advice is actually based on. Here is ours.

  • 2004–2016 — Michael’s work years. Tokyo, several times a year, plus the business-travel corridors out to Osaka and Nagoya.
  • 2017 — Tokyo together for the first time. Nakano, Ueno, Roppongi, Tsukiji, Shinkoiwa. No car yet.
  • March–April 2019 — our first big self-drive, and still the trip that changed how we travel. Tokyo out through Yuzawa and the Kagura ski fields, across to Kurobe and Toyama Bay, Kanazawa in cherry blossom season, the thatched houses at Ainokura and the wood-carving town of Inami, an onsen ryokan at Nakao Kogen, Hida beef in Takayama, Matsumoto, the Fuji Five Lakes, then down the Izu peninsula to Shimoda and back along the coast through Odawara.
  • May–June 2023 — Tokyo, Kawagoe, Karuizawa, Kiyosato, and the Fuji lakes including Arakurayama Sengen Park.
  • September–October 2023 — Kyoto and Osaka. Arashiyama, the bamboo grove, Nijo Castle, Tenryu-ji, then Dotonbori and Namba.
  • May 2024 — the Setouchi run. Kobe’s Kitano district, Himeji, the art islands at Naoshima, Kurashiki, the pottery kilns at Bizen-Imbe, tea fields at Wazuka, then Nara and Osaka.
  • February 2026 — twelve days driving Kyushu. Fukuoka, the onsen towns of Hita and Oita, Hitoyoshi, the Ebino crater walk, and the Aso caldera. Three separate strawberry farms.

That’s roughly twenty prefectures by car, across every season — cherry blossoms in Kanazawa, deep snow in Niigata, autumn in the Japan Alps, and February onsen in Kyushu.

Next: we’re driving Kansai in November 2026 — Osaka, Kobe, Wakayama, Koyasan and the Kumano region. Anything we write about that route will be published after we’ve done it, not before.

Why driving

Japan’s rail network is genuinely one of the best in the world, and for a first trip down the Tokyo–Kyoto–Osaka corridor we’d tell you to use it. Michael spent twelve years doing exactly that.

But rail decides your itinerary for you. It takes you to the places that already have stations, which are the places everyone else is already going. Ainokura, Inami, the Ebino crater, the strawberry farms outside Aso, a michi-no-eki on the Toyama coast selling the morning’s catch — none of that is a train ride.

Renting a car in Japan, getting an ETC card, working out whether an expressway pass is worth it, finding parking in a town that wasn’t built for cars — these are solvable problems, but you have to solve them yourself the first time. We’ve now done that on six trips, so we write it down.

How we work

  • We write about places we’ve been. Where we’re passing on information we haven’t verified in person — a price, a rule, an opening time — we say so and link to the source.
  • We’re not a testing lab. We don’t run controlled comparisons of rental companies or gear. We tell you what we used and how it went, which is a different and smaller claim.
  • Prices go stale. Japanese tolls, passes and admission fees change. We date our guides and revisit the ones that matter, but always confirm before you book.
  • We’ll tell you when something isn’t worth it. Several of our guides conclude that the product we could earn commission on is the wrong choice for your trip. That’s the point.

How this site makes money

Chasing Cherry Blossoms earns through affiliate links. If you book a rental car, a tour, accommodation or a rail pass through a link on this site, we may receive a commission from the provider. It costs you nothing extra — the price you pay is the same either way.

We only link to services we’ve used or would use ourselves, and a commission has never determined a recommendation. Where we think the cheaper or free option is better, we say so — you’ll find that in our expressway pass guide, which explains at length when not to buy one.

Every article carrying affiliate links says so at the top.

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A note on accuracy

Driving rules, licence requirements and toll systems are the kind of thing where being wrong actually costs someone their holiday. We source these from official material — the Japan Automobile Federation, JNTO, NEXCO and the rental operators themselves — and we cite it.

If you find something out of date or wrong, please tell us. We’d rather fix it than defend it.

Get in touch

Questions about driving in Japan, a route you are planning, or something on this site you think we have got wrong — we read everything.

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