Oct–NovRoad trips from the Shinkansen stations to the villages, coasts and onsen towns that trains and buses reach slowly. Collect the car at the station, sleep somewhere good each night and eat the local dish on the way.
Take the Shinkansen to Kanazawa, Toyama or Fukui, hire a car at the station and drive a 2 to 3 day loop built around food and a good night's sleep. Winter routes stay on the ploughed expressways and need winter tyres.
The Hokuriku Shinkansen is fast, but Gokayama, Shirakawa-go, the Echizen coast and the Wakasa lakes sit off the line, and the buses to them are few. A car joins them into one trip. Each page here gives the days, the distance and drive time from a routing engine (road data from OpenStreetMap, no traffic), the food for each day and the stay for each night.
Four are live; the next ones are on their way.
Gokayama tofu and soba, Hida beef in Shirakawa-go, a night at Hirase Onsen, Takayama's markets and a ryokan dinner. The Tōkai-Hokuriku Expressway is ploughed all winter, so snow on the thatch is the point. Winter tyres, ETC card and parking at Shirakawa-go (¥2,000) are covered.
Red snow crab at the Shinminato auction, the Tateyama range across the water at Amaharashi, a kan-buri dinner in a Himi ryokan and Takaoka's casting street. Local roads, no mountain pass; the option day adds Uozu and a night at Unazuki Onsen.
Echizen crab with its yellow tag from 6 November, sweet shrimp in Mikuni, Tōjinbō at sunset, daffodils and a crab-plan inn on the Echizen coast, then Eiheiji's sesame tofu, Ōno's soba and a sauce katsudon in Fukui. Coast roads and a toll-free expressway.
Oyaki at Zenkō-ji, a ryokan night in Hakuba, Route 148 down the Hime River to Itoigawa for black yakisoba and the Jade Coast, a kaiseki dinner at Unazuki Onsen and Toyama Bay sushi at the end. One way, with winter tyres and chains: the mountain road is the point.
The same rules apply to every route here.
Prices and availability on Klook change by date.
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