How to Cycle the Length of Japan

A mini guide of frequently asked questions

The Video: I Tried Cycling the Length of Japan: 3,000km and 27 Days on the Road | Long Way North

Hello! I hope this finds you well, and you find this guide useful. After cycling the length of Japan in May of 2024 and posting the route, a lot of people asked me about the route, and various other aspects of the journey. Hopefully this guide goes some way to answering those questions, and if it doesn’t, please reach out via one of the channels below.

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This guide is free of charge, but it took months of planning to pull this route together, and is built on years of living in Japan. If you find it useful, and can afford to, please consider supporting my next adventure, thank you.

The Basics

Why Japan?

Japan is a fantastic country for cycle touring. The roads are amazingly surfaced. Cars are generally considerate, and the countryside can be quite empty. The landscapes are varied and beautiful. Food and drink are readily available, and incredibly high quality, so you never need to carry much. Hotels are great, with good laundry facilities. There are good campsites across the country. There are hot spring baths everywhere, perfect if you have sore legs. There are good bike shops in most towns and cities you come across. Amazon can deliver in advance to any hotels you stay at in case you need more specific supplies (for example replacing my cycling cleats halfway through). Uniqlo is in most big towns if you need to buy warmer gear, or sweat through your clothes. Most people are incredibly kind. There is a good backup network of trains pretty much everywhere if you need to take a shortcut, or someone is sick or injured. There are good medical facilities. The list could go on.

Why by Bike?

If you’re here, you already know :)

Do I need to speak Japanese?

I lived in Japan for six years before attempting this cycle, so I can get by in Japanese, though I am definitely not fluent. Do you need to be able to speak Japanese to make this trip. No. Translation apps will work just fine if needed. Does it help to be able to speak some Japanese. Definitely. Learning a few basic phrases before you go will make a world of difference.

When Should I Go?

Tl;dr: May-June, mid-September to November

Longer explanation: Japan runs from about 32°N to 47°N, a wide range of latitudes. You will encounter a wide range of weather and temperatures across the latitude. The north can get very cold, and the south very hot. This means there’s only a limited window when it’s reasonably comfortable to cycle at either extreme of the country. Too early in the year and the north will be covered in snow. Too late in the year and the south will be incredibly hot and humid. May-June is beautiful, and you should get pretty good weather throughout. September to November is also good, but you’ll also likely encounter one or two typhoons as you go, which might wipe out a day or two of cycling.

Try to avoid mid June-mid July, the rainy season. AVOID late July and August. It’ll be 35°C most days with incredible humidity. Also climate change is making summer longer and more intense, so bear that in mind. Mid-winter, Hokkaido, northern Honshu and the Alps will have a lot of snow, almost certainly impassable without specific gear.

North to South, South to North?

If starting in May, start in the south. It’ll be a lovely temperature in Kyushu, and by the time you get to Hokkaido, the weather should also be pretty nice.

If starting in September/October, start in the north, in Hokkaido. It won’t have snowed much (if at all), and the temperature will be gorgeous when you get to Kyushu.

May Temperatures (high/low)

N.B - there’s a lot of mountains to climb and even in the south it gets cold at high elevations, especially if it’s windy. Take the below with a pinch of salt, and make sure you have the right gear for the coldest days.

• Kyushu: 24/15°C

• Shikoku: 20/9

• Central Honshu: 20/9

• Northern Honshu: 17/8

• Southern Hokkaido: 14/4

• Northern Hokkaido: 12/6

What to Bring

• Your bike - renting is possible, but I’d advise bringing your own bike that is fitted and kitted to the needs of your adventure. Road bike is totally fine. Touring/gravel might be useful in some parts, but 99.9% of the route below is (exceptionally) well surfaced.

• Bike Box - to protect your bike en route. When you get to Japan, you can post the bike box from south to north or vice versa using the delivery service Sagawa Express. You can specify when you want the box delivered at your final destination, and they will do it to the day. It’s pretty incredible, and costs about ¥15,000 or so to ship the empty bike box from one end of the country to the other.

• A bike bag - I don’t mean a bikepacking bags, I mean a thin, foldable bag to put your bike into. You won’t be allowed on trains without one, and generally it keeps your bike grease from going everywhere. Hotels are much friendlier to you if you can put your bikes in a bag. Local hiking store Mont Bell sell really good ones that pack down very small.

• Bikepacking bags/panniers - for carrying your stuff

• Camping gear - if camping

• Clothes/cycle gear - enough not to smell. Laundry services are readily available at most hotels, or there are laundromats in most towns if you need a wash. I went out with two pairs of cycling shorts, but posted one pair home because it was so easy to wash the used pair each night.

• Waterproofs - when it rains it rains. Waterproof trousers are optional, jacket is a must. Gloves also not a bad idea, especially if it rains when you’re at the top of a mountain and have a long descent ahead of you.

• Suncream - the sun is very strong in Japan and will burn you, especially in the south.

• Electronics - phone, camera, chargers, GPS device, headtorch etc.

• Translation device - Google Translate on phone. May get you out of sticky situations. These apps get better and better each year.

• Light cable lock - Theft is pretty rare in Japan. We had a couple of Abus combi locks, when we wanted to lock our bikes up outside a restaurant, shrine etc.

• Spares & maintenance - tube, pump, tire levers, oil, allen keys, etc.

What about food & water?

Japan’s restaurants are amazing. Make the most of them, especially in the countryside, where food is cheaper than cities. While en route, there are convenience stores every 10km or so: Lawson, Family Mart, Seven Eleven are your friends. If you ask nicely they’ll fill your water up. (mizu o kudasai / suido o kudasai).

They have every form of protein bar, rice-based snack, nuts, energy gel, you’d ever want. In Hokkaido, convenience stores are a bit further apart, so you may want to carry more water/snacks between stops. If you want bigger meals, find a local supermarket. Most hotels will have a microwave and kettle to heat things up/make instant noodles. Also there are tons of vending machines for drinks if you’re running short.

Navigation and how to find good roads?

I used Strava to plot routes to start with to get a rough sense of distance between hotels (averaging about 100km per day). We followed these routes preloaded into a Garmin, but also had Apple Maps giving us complementary navigation. Apart from a few dead ends, Apple Maps frequently gave us quieter alternative roads, while Strava preferred the quickest (and busiest) route. Prepare to be flexible, and have fun with it. Some of our best moments came from following obscure detours up into the mountains.

• Tunnels: A special shout out for tunnels. Japan loves to build them, and they can cut a lot of elevation out of a day if you take them. Most but not all have a narrow sidewalk/pavement you can ride down. Some have a wide pavement. Some feel like death traps. Double check your route to see what tunnels you’re being taken through (strava isn’t good at computing tunnels, so there’ll often be a perfectly straight line between two points where the tunnel runs, that doesn’t follow the road). On one version of planning our route through Shikoku, it suggested we take a 6km tunnel, which would have been a complete disaster.

• The mountain road: Many tunnels will have a small slip road just before them which runs over the mountain (the original mountain pass built pre tunnel). Many of these are glorious routes, but will add another 100-200m elevation for each one you take, so choose wisely my friend. Not all of these roads are still serviceable, and some will take you to landslides, dead ends, flooded tunnels etc.

• Hokkaido Tunnels: Day 24 of our route, from Sapporo to Mashike, had about 40km of tunnels. The longest was about 8km. These were fine to cycle through, and it was very empty the day we did it. Make sure you have lights. There is an inland alternative, but this adds on another 50-100 km. By the time we realised the tunnels existed, it was too late to change our route.

Hotels

Booking.com will give you hotels pretty much the whole way across the country. You’ll pay a premium for it all being translated into English, so if you can navigate onto local websites using Google Chrome’s Translate option you’ll be able to save yourself some money (though it will be clunkier). Jalan.net or Rakuten Travel is a travesty to navigate around but could save you hundreds of pounds/dollars/euros across the trip.

Camping

There are tons of camp sites across Japan, many of them beautiful. Wild camping is a grey area, do it respectfully and you’ll probably be ok. Watch out for Japan’s wildlife, there are some poisonous spiders, snakes and centipedes that you don’t want to mess with. Also bears. In Hokkaido and the mountains of northern Honshu, keep your food away from your tent at night. The Japanese for campsite is キャンプ場 (campu joh). Copy and paste it into google maps and you’ll find your nearest one. I didn’t camp so can’t recommend specific camping spots, but we did pass many en route.

Our Route

This guide is free of charge, but it took months of planning to pull this route together, and is built on years of living in Japan. If you find it useful, and can afford to, please consider supporting my next adventure.

All GPX files - https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/wrug9do0u121801kf4yrg/AAVId40_PQOjbmtpHn7Hy-g?rlkey=bot8o65l05cuw8f0kc8mt9vyl&st=rn6fqzoh&dl=0

Or if you want to see the pretty maps, Strava

For the macro view of the route: Google Maps

Note: During rainy season and into typhoon season, many mountain roads get washed out. Most are repaired quickly, some are left destroyed. I can’t promise our route will work forever, and it should obviously be followed with appropriate judgement and caution. We were also happy to meander and get lost in the mountains if necessary, there are definitely more direct versions of the route we took.

Also there are plenty of awesome places we didn’t see: Fukuoka, Kyoto, Nara, Mt Fuji. I had visited all these before so didn’t feel it was necessary to go back. If it’s your first time in Japan, you might want to adjust the route to accommodate as these are quintessential Japan experiences.

Good Luck!

And if you ever attempt the route, please let me know. I’d love to hear stories from people who’ve been inspired by this adventure.

Anything you still have questions about, let me know in the comments below!

Very best,
Oscar