Getting there by car
A good number of these shrines cannot sensibly be reached without a car. They predate the railways by eight hundred years, and the railways did not go to them.
The permit
You need an International Driving Permit issued under the 1949 Geneva Convention, carried together with your own licence. Get it in your home country before you travel — it cannot be issued in Japan.
An IDP under the 1968 Vienna Convention is not valid in Japan
This catches people out. Japan recognises the 1949 convention only. If your country issues the 1968 version, an IDP will not help you.
Licences from Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, Monaco and Taiwan are handled differently: you drive on your own licence accompanied by an official Japanese translation, valid for one year from the date you entered Japan.
Rules change. Confirm against JAF, the Japan Automobile Federation, before you book anything.
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Driving
- Side of the road
- Left. Steering wheel on the right.
- Speed limits
- Signed in km/h. Typically 40–60 on ordinary roads, 80–120 on expressways.
- Alcohol
- Effectively zero tolerance, and the penalties are severe. Do not.
- Level crossings
- You must come to a complete stop at every railway crossing, every time. This is enforced.
- Child seats
- Required under six years old. Rental companies supply them — reserve one.
Planning a day of several shrines? The day-route planner orders them so you reach each shrine office before it closes, using straight-line distances as a rough guide.
Why we give you a phone number
Japanese car navigation systems are usually searched by telephone number, not by address. You type in ten digits and the destination appears. It is far faster than picking Japanese characters out of an on-screen keyboard, and it is why every shrine page here shows the phone number with a copy button.
Failing that, copy the Japanese address from the shrine page and paste it in. We deliberately do not romanise addresses: a romanised address is not something a navigation system or a taxi driver can use.
Some Toyota systems accept a Mapcode instead — a short numeric code for an exact point. Where we have one, it is on the shrine page.
Aim for the car park, not the shrine
Enter the shrine itself and navigation will often route you to the main hall — which can be on the far side of a long approach path, up steps, or through a street too narrow to turn in. Where we have confirmed the car park separately, the shrine page gives you a “Directions to the car park” button. Use that one.
Driving over New Year? At 28 ichinomiya the car park or the road in works differently in the first days of January — see parking over New Year.
Tolls
Expressways are tolled and not cheap. Rental companies rent an ETC card that lets you use the automatic lanes and settles everything at the end — take it. Several companies also offer flat-rate expressway passes for overseas visitors, sold by region and by number of days. Ask when you book; the terms change often enough that it is not worth quoting here.
Fuel, and the thing nobody tells you
Fill up before you leave the main road. Rural petrol stations keep short hours, often close on Sundays, and in depopulated areas they have closed for good. The distance between stations in the mountains can be considerable, and a shrine at the end of a valley is exactly where you do not want to discover this.
Say 満タン (mantan) for a full tank. Self-service pumps are common and the screens usually have an English button.
Mountain roads
Several ichinomiya sit on or below mountains. Expect single-track sections with passing places, blind curves with convex mirrors, and no barrier on the drop side. Some roads close in winter, and some close overnight. If a shrine page mentions a mountain approach, check the road's status on the day — a closure will not be signposted until you are already an hour up the valley.
Ten ichinomiya cannot be reached by road at all: ichinomiya you reach by boat.
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