In June, we had an enjoyable drive holiday in the Faroe Islands. With our international driving licence still good for another 6 months, we thought we should do our very first drive holiday in Japan to make good use of the IDL.
Between Kyushu and Okinawa, I figured that Kyushu would have more to see. We also reasoned that Kyushu should be warmer in December allowing more outdoor activities despite the early sunset hours.
At the time of booking, all flights to Kyushu's Fukuoka airport needed a transit at Narita. Since domestic flights mostly depart from Haneda, the connection would be a pesky overhead. Hence, I opted for Thai Airlines. With a well timed transit in Bangkok, Thai has a direct connection from Bangkok to Fukuoka. SQ and ANA were out of my budget and I was on a mission to make it a 5K SGD mission.
My choice of car rental was Orix. It has a shuttle from FKK to their depot and a website that I could navigate well. Orix came with decent reviews. Their rental prices were moderate, with a second driver at no extra charge.
I booked a small car with full coverage, ETC for post-paid tolls, winter studless tyres. Winter tyres opened up the possibility of venturing the Aso-Yufuin area. Without the option, full coverage is void when I enter the Aso-Mt Kuju area. It came up to 130 SGD per day or about 1400 SGD for 11 days.
I decided to return the car to Orix a day before departing Japan. We planned to stay the last night in Fukuoka. The plan was to get a taxi (about 30 SGD) from our last hotel and scoot over to FKK early in the morning, without the constraints of returning the car and its admin work. It worked out to be a saving of 100 SGD, taxi vs another day's worth of car rental.
With only 12 days in all, we could only cover the top half of Kyushu and forgo the south part of the region.
The plan was : Fukuoka > Nagasaki > Yanagawa > Hita > Kumamoto > Beppu > Fukuoka.
2025 is the 80th year of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We want to make a courtesy visit, even if it is for a day. Yanagawa, the Japanese version of Amsterdam or China's Hangzhou with its canals, is a must for me. Hita was the spot I found the cheapest ryokan with all meals and onsen thrown in. I needed to do my first ever onsen in my birthday suit at least once in my life. Kumamoto was the launchpad to Mt Aso which I am actually terrified of visiting. I was mesmerised by pictures of steamy plumes escaping from drainage vents in Beppu, so that warranted a stopover too. Fukuoka at the beginning and end of the trip was a necessity but we would find something meaningful there.
At the start of the planning, I needed 1.89 SGD to buy 100¥. Towards the trip, the ¥ dropped to 1.85 SGD. I had to stop myself from stocking up the ¥ as the trip neared.
A couple of details before jetting off - we had to sort out our Japan entry with a generated QR code online at Visit Japan Web. It would save the pain of a paper and pen arrival script on arrival. We also got ourselves vaccinated against Covid and the flu. One can never be too careful.
Our planned route:
Tools for this trip:
xe.com (currency converter)
glandnav.com (pin point elevation finder)
google.com/maps (drive mapping)
Gemini (Google AI) for destination info from non-English sites (checks required)
timeanddate.com (general weather forecast for esp Kokonoe and Mount Aso)
weathernews.jp (accurate met information and warnings)