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**in regards to the recent disaster happening to Northern Honshu, our thoughts goes to the everyone there. i'm also glad my relatives in Japan are all safe.**


This was a highly anticipated and extensively planned trip traveling from Osaka to Tokyo, however, taking a long detour across the western coastline of Japan. We traveled directly to Kyoto, then drove along a good deal of the west coast of Japan then cut across Nagano back to Tokyo. It was an almost entirely scenic route, with some great food along the way!

Our route took us through Osaka, Kyoto, Shiga, Fukui, Ishikawa, Toyama, Niigata, Nagano, Gunma, Saitama, to Tokyo. That's 11 different prefectures! Of course, we merely cut through some, and barely stopped in others, but overall, it was a pretty wild ride (with me doing all the driving, mind you~). A more concise trip entails:

We took JAL's redeye from Hong Kong to Osaka, a morning bus to Kyoto, then spending first 2 days in Kyoto. We got the rental car on 3rd morning, drove along the south side of Biwa Lake then up the west coast of Fukui and Ishikawa prefectures to Kanazawa, but making a long detour in Mikuni for the aquarium. We then spent 2 nights in Kanazawa, the 3rd noon drove up along the west side of Noto Peninsula, along the long stretch of beach that is the Chirihama Beach Driveway, up to Gan-mon, this gorgeous coastline of cliffs and heavily eroded rock formations. We then headed eastwards, cut across to Wakura Onsen town (directly south of Noto Island) for 2 nights stay in an onsen resort with great service. One of my travel-mates and I drove up the next morning to Wajima(north tip of Noto Peninsula) and found everything closed(tip: their morning market closes every 2nd and 4th wednesday). We returned before noon and headed to Notojima Aquarium on the island. Next day we traveled down to the town of Himi for lunch, then drove through Toyama, threw a curve ball on the south end of Niigata and into Nagano, resting at Shibu Onsen on the outskirts of Shiga-kogen, the largest ski resort in Japan and host of 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics(Shiga-kogen for the grand slalom, Hakuba to the south for many other snow related events... and Nagano city for the indoor events). The hotel we stayed in, Kanaguya, built in 1758, was the inspiration for the masterful Miyazaki anime Spirited Away (aka Sen To Chihiro No Kamikakushi). Next morning we went for a stroll into Jigokudani to visit the famous snow monkeys(hot springs monkeys) and drove to Tokyo in the afternoon, traveling through Gunma and Saitama pref. the rental car logged 1138kms, as i returned the car a day early, having to take my friend to see a doctor for his eye inflammation, so we ended up with a shopping day instead of another traveling day (original plan was to visit FujiQ, a theme park with a 1:1 bust of Evangelion's Unit-01, as well as visit Yamanaka Lake for a chance at "mirror diamond fuji"). Oh well, there's always next time! We returned to Hong Kong on the evening flight arriving home just before midnight making this an almost exactly 240hr trip!