Hot Wheels: Hiring a Car in Japan
I’m at the car rental agency in Tokyo, next to Mishima Shinkansen Station, an hour from Tokyo Station. I’m about to be given the keys to a rental car—I hope, because I half-expect something to go wrong. I’ve come to the historic Izu Peninsula to make a Mount Fuji road-trip with my husband, Ralph. We have long loved and admired Mount Fuji and can’t seem to get enough of it.
As I’m handed the keys, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m a grifter who just pulled off a heist. I’ve long relied on the freedom of rental cars, using them everywhere from Iceland and Italy to Mexico and Australia, and I have the necessary international driver’s license (with Japanese translation). But hiring a car in Japan, a rule-loving, bullet train–tethered nation, feels like a feat.
Ralph, who was previously our driver, learned the hard way in 2015, after showing up at a Hokkaido car-rental agency and being denied a vehicle for not having his license translated into Japanese, forcing us to visit a Sapporo license office to get all the paperwork sorted. Luckily, no such setbacks hit us this time, and before I can say arigatou, I’m driving to Izu’s mountainous interior on Route 136, past roadside Lawsons and Shinto shrines, already arguing with the Japanese GPS she-bot and acting like a petulant gaijin driver in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift.
Izu’s Interior: A Mt Fuji Road-Trip Highlight
Free and badass I may feel, but our itinerary reminds me of what a nerd I really am. As we make our way through the peninsula’s interior our first stop is Joren Waterfalls and Wasabi Farm, a popular spot with Japanese grannies and the silver-hair set, a club I am fast joining. So much for my daredevil side.
Joren-no-taki Waterfall is one of the largest falls on Izu Peninsula, formed from lava flowing from Hachikuboyama volcano. The visitor center is more like a michi-no-eki, Japan’s version of roadside service areas, which are next-level, selling local products and above-average meals often featuring local specialties. There are a handful of shops hawking all things wasabi, from green plushie pens to fresh roots pulled from cold-water aquaculture pens.
Naturally we start our visit with a wasabi soft-serve. And then we walk down a 15-minute trail to the cascade, where the rush of falls fills the air. The steep drop through bamboo, woodland thicket and endemic joren shida ferns looks difficult, but I see a 90-year-old doing it with her family. She’s the real badass.
At the base, the blue-green falls cascade into a mossy rock pool which transfixes our gazes, like fire, for several minutes. There are some elders selling jars of pickled wasabi, grilled sweet-water fish, fresh wasabi stalks, matsutake tea and wasabi mayonnaise. We scoop up a bagful of goodies and head back up the hill to continue our drive to Mount Fuji.
Izu Peninsula, mostly contained inside Shizuoka Prefecture, is all about views of the coast and Mt. Fuji, but the roads through its woodsy interior are just as intriguing, ancient and mysterious they access several old pilgrimage routes, age-old cedar trees and long-forgotten tunnels.
I’ve driven in Japan before but only in Hokkaido and Kyushu where the roads are newer and wider and easier to navigate. Here, they are narrow, old and winding. Eventually we start our descent to the sunny open seaside. We find the ryokan hotels in Izu Peninsula very affordable, especially now, during midweek, when rates have plunged to half their usual cost.
Next Stop: Ito, on the East Coast
Courtesy of Hoshino Resorts Kai Anjin
Courtesy of Hoshino Resorts Kai Anjin
Most drivers circumnavigate the peninsula and that’s what the next few days will be like. Our road trip continues on the northeast coast and heads south. Our next stop: Ito, the relaxed coastal city famed for its relaxed izakaya bars and samurai history. Much like the peninsula itself, Ito is divided into two sections: the coast, with its glassy seafront hotels and seafood izakaya, and the hilly interior, with its historic museums1 and parks.
We were to spend two nights exploring both sides, parking our hire car for free in the big car park surrounding Hoshino Resorts Kai Anjin. Fun fact: this 45-room onsen hotel in Ito is dedicated to William Adams, the English navigator who entered Japan in 1600 and is immortalized in the Netflix show Blue Eyed Samurai. The hotel plays a short animated film about his life and features art pieces made with old ship parts. I especially love the cute mini mobiles of 17th-century ships made with peanut shells that hang in the elevators.
We enjoy the hotel’s sweet penthouse onsen and lounge, and help ourselves to unlimited draft beer on the al-fresco terrace overlooking Sagamo Bay and Hatsushima island. After a soak, we feast on sashimi, pickled sakura shrimp, and minced conger eel and burdock root over a bottle of Shida Japanese chardonnay and one too many sakes.
Courtesy of Hoshino Resorts Kai Ito
Courtesy of Hoshino Resorts Kai Ito
Courtesy of Hoshino Resorts Kai Ito
Tokaikan. Courtesy of Ito City Tourism Division
The next day, we leave the car and walk to our next hotel in Ito, Hoshino Resorts Kai Ito. The city is bisected by the Itoo River, which is lined by izakaya, footbaths, temples and historic wooden ryokan like Tokaikan, a 1928 bathhouse-turned-museum sprawling over three floors. We sneak into its onsen, reserved for guests of the adjacent hotel, for a cheeky 15-minute soak, which was a balm for our sore legs and feet. But our hotel’s camelia onsen, later that night, is far superior, with a thermal waterfall cascading aside a pink camellia tree into a bath. We also love the hot springs swimming pool in the hotel’s private garden, and our camelia oil workshop lesson, where we pressed our own camelia oil, a rare and expensive cosmetic used in Japan for centuries.
Resuming our Fuji road-trip the next day, we make a stop at the Mount Omuro single-seat chairlift and have a wet beach hike to Cape Tsumeki Lighthouse with the volcanic Izu islands dotting the grey horizon. We spend a rainy night in a ryokan in Shimoda, a rustic port town in the south. Friendly and affordable, Seiryuso ryokan meticulous tea-house–style rooms.
Shimoda is also known for Matthew Perry. Could that be any cooler? Not that Matthew Perry (RIP Chandler.) American Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who landed in self-isolating Japan in 1853 and forced it to reopen. We follow the namesake Perry Road to Ryosenji Temple, and its adjacent Museum of Black Ship, which displays a number of Perry artifacts. Then we stop for an excellent tempura lunch at Uenoyamatei, popular with locals.
Driving Izu’s West Coast to Fuji
Cape Irozaki. Image by Getty Images/T-Tadanobu
Mt. Fuji view from Izu Peninsula. Image by Getty Images/Billy_Fam
As we round Cape Irozaki, Izu’s southernmost tip, the views of Fuji get better, bigger and more frequent the farther north we drive. Free maps of the area even pinpoint the places where you can see Fuji-san, and I jokingly call it “The 1000 Views of Fuji Coast.” Izu Tourism Board: you’re welcome.
Beautiful as it is, this stretch of Izu has some corny attractions. Good thing road trips are made for such campiness. Matsukaki Cape is dubbed Lover’s Cape. Here we see other road-tripping couples stretching their legs on the extensive boardwalk trails, marked with bells for lovers to ring together, devotion announcement areas, heart-shaped photo spots, not to mention early blooming sakura and arresting Fuji views that make it all feel like eternal domestic honeymoon hell.
Our next stop is Numazu Club, our hotel in Numazu city, in the peninsula’s northwest corner. The former private club only opened as a guesthouse in June 2023, in a shaded Meiji-era tea house, surrounded by prim gardens and pine trees. Its eight rooms, each with cypress soaking tubs, are located in a modernist concrete annex overlooking a reflecting pool.
Ralph, an architect, loves the hotel’s design details, with its several types of woven wood and craft techniques on the windows and ceilings. I love its Chinese kaiseki-style restaurant, Chatei, serving Shanghai crab with xiao long bao, “drooling chicken” with Szechuan pepper, almond tofu, and some very slippery noodles.
Into the Belly of Fuji
We reach the end of the peninsula and since haven’t had enough Fuji, so we continue another 90 minutes to the base of Fuji itself. As we drive, the Fuji scenes become more and more spectacular. Shiraito Falls, inside Fuji Hakone Izu National Park is an otherworldly 150-meter-wide cascade tumbling off a cliff in so many white ribbons, with snow-capped Fuji floating above it.
Much as I love Japan train travel, I realize a trip like this would not be possible on the rail network. It’s a reminder that driving in Japan offers the rarest of Japanese luxuries: freedom of mobility. This feels especially true in a nation where your entire day can often feel regimented by train schedules and fixed times for things like meals and onsens.
Courtesy of Hoshinoya Fuji
Courtesy of Hoshinoya Fuji
Courtesy of Hoshinoya Fuji
The final stop on our Mount Fuji road-trip is Hoshinoya Fuji, a series of white cubes stacked along a woodsy mountain ridge. It’s billed as Japan’s first glamping resort and offers some of the best views of Fuji-san around.
At the resort that night we do a food-smoking course and dine on game meat grilled tableside at a table in the forest. In the morning, we luck out with a spectacular rare showing of lenticular clouds stacked above the summit of Fuji like some sort of mystical alien phenomenon. Was Fuji thanking us for being so devout?
The highlight of Fuji is the vast range of outdoor activities it offers, and after all the driving, we’re happy for a chance to get out of the car. We e-bike on old lava trails and canoe at dawn on a glassy Lake Kawaguchi. But best of all, we go into the belly of Fuji. After seeing it so many times from far away, we actually get to go inside of it. Instead of being this big untouchable peak on the horizon, it now felt earthy, mystical, and very much alive.
“There are many mountain worshippers in Japan,” our hiking guide, Koichi Kondo, tells us. Kondo, from Fujitozan, leads us to a sacred Shinto cave in Aokigahara Forest on Mount. Fuji. He adds that he’s a member of a group that actually worships Fuji. “I’ve climbed it over 20 times, and it never gets old,” he says.
And I agree.
Lede and hero image by Getty Images/SHOSEI/Aflo.