I want to spend 3 weeks in Japan, rent a place west of Kobe and drive around the countryside.Has anyone done this? My idea is to rent a apartment for a month (around 800 quid), use it as a base where I can cook food myself. Needs to be small town so parking is free but big enough that it has a supermarket. Rent a car and do day trips all around the place, maybe staying overnight a couple of times for longer distances.Best I can tell there are companies like livemax that rent monthly or weekly even to foreigners. I already drive around Japan last time so no problems there. I'd be really interested in hearing first hand experiences from people who've done something like this.
>>2894986cringe
>>2894986oh look another deranged weeb thread.[-]
>>2894986I think most people stick to the trains for Japanese travels. I have driven in Japan for work, but mostly parked at the office and my house in the countryside. I didn't do it for very long, and really only drove into the mountains or to a hiking trail national park type places on my off days.I am getting anxiety just thinking about trying to find a parking spot in a proper city.You could try an airbnb or vrbo to find short term accommodation to cook at. Some sharehouses may allow for month-to-month and have kitchens as well.Also I don't know why Kobe keeps being brought up here. It's a suburb of Osaka. Just go there. Is it fans of the Lakers or Wagyu that think it's a travel destination?
>>2894986I've done this twice with a group of friends, very good times! First was just a few days with a car-accessible hotel on account of our weeb's demand for an Initial D pilgrimage but it ended up being a highlight of the trip. So we did it again, with a vacation rental for a couple weeks seeing Tohoku. From the twisting mountain roads and 5-star rest areas to neon expressway nights and kombini pit stops, it was an unforgettable roadtrip aesthetic.If visiting in the summer like we had to, the ice-cold A/C proved to be a major saving grace over other forms of transit. Also, beware the high road tolls - plan around slow routes or regions that minimize how many you deal with, we racked up like $150/day driving around Kanto the first time.
>>2895058Yeah, parking is something that was a struggle in cities.Last time we went we split the holiday in two - half in tokyo and where train would take us and half hiring a car in osaka and driving north. Every time I had to park in a city it was a total pain and expensive. On the other hand driving around the mountains was the most memorable part of the holiday. Which is why this time we want to spend more time doing that.AirBnB gets expensive as most don't discount much for long stays. Didn't know about vrbo - I'll check it out too, thx.About Kobe, I just used it as a geographical reference point since most people know where it is - I just meant the region West of Kobe, probably Okayama but I recently started thinking about Mihara as a base since it's nicely in the middle, has big supermarkets and small enough that places will have parking.I've been to Kobe last time because they have the bets woodworking tools museum in Japan. One of highlights of last visit.
>>2895067We're going in October so shouldn't be too hot. I know about tolls, we mostly drove on the old parallel roads to avoid it since we were in no hurry anywhere. I was amazed how deserted those roads are. There were sections of 10km+ which were single lane roads with hardly any passing places and I never met anyone going the other way. But I'm definitely not getting an SUV again.Rest areas in Japan are amazing, they sort of double as visitor centre for the area. When we drove through gifu we even bought some things in them I still use - paper wrapped tea caddies. It did not compute with me that a rest area would stock good tea but the senchas I got there were a solid 4/5. They directed us to interesting things in the area as well.We rented from toyota, it felt expensive. Compared to a day rental we did on the spur of the moment in Shizuoka it was double the price almost. What rental do you recommend?
>>2895137>>2895139Yep agreed on all counts. Got some shockingly good packaged mochi from one (made from local grape harvest, if it translated right?).>AirBnBdefinitely comes with a tourist/familiarity/name-brand premium attached. I hunted through places like Rakuten, Stay Japan, and the local vacation/tourism/real estate companies they often list for, for ones willing to deal w/ foreigners. Overall much nicer abodes for the same rate.>Car rentalI wasn't the one who booked them, but we used Toyota the first trip and Avis the 2nd. Both seemed fine, pretty standard check-in+service. Hatchbacks each time, a Corolla and then the Suzuki equivalent.
The random roadside finds are always a delight, too.
We don't really go to museums much but the Takenaka Carpentry Tools museum was an exception, best museum except the some of the British onesAnyway, decided to split the stay across two places, one in Mihara, one past Hiroshima within Driving distance of Kyushu. works out at 50 quid on that vrbo per night which is acceptable.Any recs for such a place past Hiroshima? Needs to have decent supermarkets within a 15 min drive, parking and quiet. The second criteria is good position for day trips - nature, vernacular architecture, small towns with festivals.
given enough opportunities you can just randomly bump into some flower arrangement competition or other random activities, my language is so poor but we'd somehow manage get round and people were nice enough to have some bumble through things, presumably screaming inside gaijin go home
