Driving in Hokkaido is a bit of a nightmare if you fancy yourself as a bit of Lewis Hamilton and the utmost of patience is required to be able to enjoy a Hokkaido road trip.

You can drive around to different places (Bear Mountain is probably worth it) but be aware, almost all of the roads around Hokkaido, at least where we went, are 50-70km/hr speed limit and one lane. If you are an impatient drive like myself, you’re going to be very frustrated driving in Hokkaido. The roads are open and not very dangerous (at least in summer time), in most other countries the speed limit would be 100km/hr on these roads but you’re reduced to 50km/hr on open stretches of road for much of the time. This is one of the reasons why I’m not in a hurry to return to this resort, or in fact anywhere in Hokkaido.

If you are much more relaxed about going places, then you won’t have a problem. The Japanese drivers like to drive 50km/hr, until the reach the passing lanes, when they decide that driving 120km/hr is a better idea, so you can’t pass easily.  This makes driving in Hokkaido a test of patience. I’ve drive in most places in Japan but driving in Hokkaido seems particularly slow, so take your time, enjoy the scenery, and just prepare yourself for longer journey times than usual.  If something is 50km/hr away, it’s probably going to take you at least an hour to get there.

If you’re wanting to do some driving in Hokkaido, there’s a few different rental car companies at New Chitose International Airport, Toyota and actually most of the rental car companies in Japan usually has multi-lingual GPS, but we usually use Google Maps and find they’re sometimes better than the car GPS.  Get a wifi device and you’ll be right.  To get around Hokkaido and do some road trips, you really do need to hire a car, so make sure you’ve got an international drivers license as rental car companies in Japan will only let you hire one with that.

Many of the rental car companies at New Chitose are actually based about 5 minutes away.  You go to their office in the airport, and you’ll get a shuttle bus to where the cars are. There’s also an outlet mall (not really worth shopping at) so you can hang out there, right beside where the rental cars are.  See the locations and names on Toucan’s Map of Hokkaido.