Goodbye Hokkaido, next stop... Okinawa?

2025-04-03T10:45:48.000Z

We've been going over the pros and cons of the current route, and have decided that the V-shaped travel route is not our best option.

Discussed in my previous post, the V-shaped route was intended to start us in cherry-blossom season, take us down to Osaka for a few weeks, then Yakushima, and then slowly back up north. On further examination there are a few of problems with this.

First, we're planning to spend our initial week or so in Hokkaido, which actually leaves us with maybe ten days to get down to Osaka. That's a lot of interesting territory to cover in only a week! Also, while we'll be in Osaka itself for a couple of weeks, Ash will be preoccupied with exam preparation, leaving me exploring Osaka largely by myself.
After Osaka, the plan would be to head to Yakushima, then back up to continue the rest of the trip.

So, new plan!^{(Until the next plan)}

Hokkaido → Kagoshima → Okinawa Image credit: JNTO.

We'll still start with a week or so in Hokkaido, visiting Lake Toya, Hakodate, and renting a car for a day trip to Matsumae a bit further down the coast. This part of the trip is strongly influenced by a lovely Japan Guide video on a two day trip from Sapporo to Hakodate.

Matsumae Castle, Hokkaido. Image credit: JNTO.

Hakodate, Hokkaido. Image credit: JNTO.

Once we've completed our mini Hokkaido tour, we'll head back up to Sapporo, catch a flight to Kagoshima (flights are inexpensive), spend a few days there, then take a short ferry to Yakushima island for four days of hiking around the forest island that inspired Princess Mononoke.

Ferries and car rental for regional islands aren't really available through the usual providers you might use, like booking.com, etc, but honestly not that difficult to figure out.

For car rental we're using Yakushima NAVI (personally I am very much looking forward to my first time driving a keicar), and you can book a hydrofoil to/from Yakushima with Toppy & Rocket.

Kei car! Photo By Tokumeigakarinoaoshima - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85137674

When we wave goodbye to Yakushima, we'll make our way towards Okinawa to camp out for Ash's exams for a couple of weeks. Once the exams are over, our travel arrangements will be a lot more flexible, and we can stick around, fly, or ferry our way back to Kyūshū.

We actually originally planned to start our trip in Okinawa and work north, but were drawn to Hokkaido by the chance of catching cherry blossom season.

#Kyūshū

With a more relaxed itinerary, it will be nice to have the option of dropping into Aso-Kuju National Park on our way up towards Fukuoka.

Aso-Kuju National Park. Image credit: JNTO.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to about Fukuoka is the chance to visit the home of tonkotsu ramen, where the talented Cork chef Takashi Miyazaki hails from.

The only wrinkle in the south-to-north itinerary is that it sort of coincides with tsuyu (rainy season):

Region	Start	End
Okinawa	May 8	June 23
Southern Kyushu	May 29	July 13
Shikoku	June 4	July 17
Kansai (incl. Kyoto)	June 6	July 19
Kanto (incl. Tokyo)	June 8	July 20
Northern Tohoku	June 12	July 27

Realistically though there's no way to avoid rainy season when traveling during the summer months. Plus, coming from Ireland, we are no strangers to rain 😅 Warm rain even sounds like an upgrade!

Since regional flights appear to be relatively inexpensive, it may even just make more sense for us to hop around a bit more rather than trying to make everything fit into train journeys. The more I see of Hokkaido through various YouTube videos the more time I want to spend there. We'll definitely have to head back there when the weather is warming up.

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@duggan — kyushu

Goodbye Hokkaido, next stop... Okinawa?

#Kyūshū