The rainy season has started in Tokyo. But so far - touch wood - it is a lot less strenous than usually. Look at the weather forecast. For a rainy season, we certainly are getting a lot of sun.

I have written before about how Japan has five seasons, with the exception of Hokkaido and Okinawa. Five seasons means the usual ones plus the rainy season.

When it rains in Japan, it can really pour. Tokyo is not like southwestern Japan, where they can get a hundred millimeters in a day. You had better plan for some activities when the weather is bad.
Although today is fine, and we plan to go to the park before lunch. But tomorrow looks like a good day for a museum visit.

I apologize for not blogging as often as I used to, I am writing. Not a blog, but a book. At last. Actually, by the time you read this I may even be editing.

But I can write all I want. The real question is what you want to read.

I have started writing a couple of guide books about my home town, Tokyo. As I bring our triplets whenever we travel, the experiences we have should be useful for other families. Especially if you do not know what to expect from your Tokyo visit. Setting the expectations right is crucial in having a good experience. Technically, the difference between an electric Porsche, a Nissan Leaf, and a Tesla is not that enormous. But your expectations of driving them is not the same.

So what should you expect from my book? Well, I am more ofa Tesla than a Nissan Leaf, and definitely not a Porsche. But I am also interested in people buying my book. So please - tell me what you want to know. I am writing this book
for you, to create something that will be useful when you come to Tokyo. I of course know how confusing the city can be (the houses are numbered in the order they were built). But also how rewarding it can be (our kids went overboard when the koto player at Kani Doraku played the theme song from Tonari no Tottoro).

While the Internet has changed travel, it does not seem to have changed guidebooks nearly as much. You still either get listings of what there is to do or semi-literary memoirs. I love reading those though, because I am much the same as you: I know the only way to judge wether something is worth my time and money is the experience of others. So that is what I am focusing on - but not a memoir. Take a normal guidebook and put all the listings of things to do on the Internet (like in this blog). Then you get something like what I am writing today.

i know (perhaps better than most, since I had to go there with a twin stroller) what a parent needs to know about navigating Tokyo (or the rest of Japan). But it is not useful to have a book that lists every restroom with a changing board. They all have them now. If you need one, you will not want to drag around a book. You will look in Google Maps.

Not that the book I am writing are going to weigh more than Google Maps. An ebook is just a file with formating codes. That is what I am writing. Maybe I will do a paper version in the future.
But for now it is an ebook that you can download and read when you are planning your trip. I will try to include information to help you find places to stay, what to eat, how to figure out where to eat it, and how to find playgrounds for your kids.

There is nothing that says an ebook has to be all text. Except Amazon, because they charge extra for books which take a long time to download. Techically speaking you could include pictures as well. But then you have to pay for them. I may include them in non-Amazon versions of the book - you can download ebooks from other stores on the Kindle too, although an iPad with the Kindle app is a better reading platform. We will see how it works out.

Okinawa is an amazing destination (our kids still talk about the beach near the villa we rented on Sesoko Island), and the northern, rural part is a lot more fun than the urbanized and industrialzed south. Even if there are quite a few amazing beaches in southern Okinawa too.

But if you are going to Okinawa (or coming back) there are several things which your kids will ask to do, and several that they will want to do if they knew about them. Apart from going to the beach, that is. Not that you could not do that every day, for most of the day. Okinawa is part of Japan, so many of the questions people have about going there are the same. But nevertheless, Okinawa is a bit different.

Despite the balmy weather (pretty much like Hawaii, except when there is a typhoon), there will be rainy day. Okinawa does not have the same seasons as the rest of Japan. There are plenty of things you can do then, but I will come back to those.
But while weather is nice, there are plenty of things you can do apart from going to the beach. Actually, your kids are likely to ask you to spend time on the beach all the time. But just in case they happen to ask for something else, here are a few things they may want to do.

It is somewhat surprising to find a world class aquarium and aquatic museum in northern Okinawa, but this would be the pride of any big city, if it was not located in the northern Okinawan countryside. It is huge, with several rooms and departments showing off the Okinawan sea life. Which is exciting in and off itself, since the islands are isolated enough to create some interesting marine plant and wildlife.

But the thing that steals the attention is the huge tank in the center of the exhibition. It is one of the biggest saltwater tanks in Asia and it is full of the marine life of Okinawa (although your kids will probably be more fascinated by the divers cleaning it). There is a small café by the main tank but you have to be very early to get a table, or wait for several hours (which is not worth it).
While the aquarium is great if it rains, the huge park surrounding it offers a completely different experience for your kids - even if most of the attractions, like the dolphin show and the turtle breeding tanks, are connected to it. The dolphin show is amazing but try to get seats at least 30 minutes before the show starts. In particular if you want good seats.

The Ocean Expo park has several other parts than those which are related to the aquarium, however. There are several traditional Okinawan buildings, but without a guide explaining them it is a bit hard to relate to what you see - entire families, and their animals, used to live in what is smaller than a modern campervan. The Okinawan government had a rule that nobody was allowed to have houses bigger than a certain measure, and it was strictly enforced until the Japanese Meji government formalized their annexation of the islands, ending three hundred years of Satsuma clan rule.
Fun though that is the really interesting thing are two other museums: The Oceanic Culture Museum and planetarium, and the Tropical Dream Center.
The Oceanic Culture Museum in the Motobu Ocean Expo Park is heavily focused on Polynesia and the travels of the Polynesians. As interesting as those are the Polynesians probably never made it to Okinawa, although their predecessors may have. But the museum is fascinating and well executed, with some artifacts behind glass but most of the focus on interactivity and discovery.

The park is full of flowers and plants which are lavishly distributed throughout the park, often bound up in shapes like monkeys, frogs, and footballs. Your kids will love posing in front of them. But the third attraction is not the flowers and plants themselves, it is a greenhouse. Or rather, three greenhouses. You may wonder why anyone would want that in subtropical Okinawa, which surely is hot enough during the season. But not humid enough to grow the more than 2000 orchids you can find here. Another reason to take the little shuttlebus that runs throughout the park is the restaurant at the Tropical Dream Center, as the greenhouses and associated buildings (like a viewing tower) are called. It is much better than the buffet restaurant at the acquarium, not that it is especially bad. But it is a buffet. Your kids will love the sausages and fried chicken, but do make an attempt at making them try at least the “nikujaga” the stew with potatoes and meat.

Okinawa was once divided in several warring states, but they were gradually unified under the king in Naha, the capital of the province today. Then, the Japanese invided and conquered the islands.
Some of the most pitched battles took place near the main castle of the northern kingdom (since the Japanese came from the north, and had already conquered the islands bridging Okinawa and Japan).
Today, the castle is completely destroyed, only the ruins remain. Although they are impressive enough, it is hard to imagine how impressive it must have been when there was a Japanese-style fortress tower, although probably colored red, rising at the center. There is a visitors center which sells drinks and food. The restaurants are extremely crowded but the food is surprisingly reasonable for tourist restaurants. Do not put any spices in the food, Okinawan cooking uses much more spices than mainland Japanese, and not wasabi but the regular chili peppers. The aspic with chilli peppers make a great addition to the noodle dishes - for grownups.

Another interesting feature, which may only be available seasonally, is the kiosk just before the ticket gate. Although to call it a gate may be stretching it. Anyway, keep the fingers of your kids away from the huge shallow pan with a brownish liquid in it. It id going to be hot. But buy a bottle of freshly pressed sugar cane juice (even better if they will press it in front of your kds). And then explain to them that this is how you make sugar, and thanks to all the hard work that goes into it and that the sugar cane only grows in tropical climates, sugar used to be fantastically expensive (not quite worth its weight in gold but sometimes in silver). It was the sugar production that made the Japanese conquer Okinawa, and that kept the Hawaiian kingdom going until the Americans took the islands in a coup.
Let your kids run free among the castle ruins, but make sure that they do not slip or fall. The stones in the paths can be loose here and there. And watch out especially that they do not fall down one of the magical wellsprings that dot the ruins. The Okinawans still worship them.

Okinawa is in the tropics, and the climate is not just mediterrenean like that of Tokyo and most of mainland Japan, it is actually tropical all year round. This means water buffalo thrive, and just like in countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand they are the favorite beast of burden. They are much stronger than cows, and they have much less problems wading in the mud of the rice fields.
In most of the Okinawa archipelago, this means they were once the only dray animals people had access to (except themselves). Horses were rare and expensive. But water buffalo could pull heavy loads, so they were hitched to carts.
As the roads developed and became nicer, some of those carts were used to transport not just goods, but people. Today, the water buffalo rides are probably more associated with the Yaeyama islands to the south, where you can ride the water buffalo cart between Irimote and Yubu island (the only way to get there). But there is also a water buffalo cart ride in northern Okinawa, in the village of Bise just to the north of the Ocean Expo park. The streets of the village are lined with fukugi trees, which makes them feel cool even when the temperature is hot. And the villagers offer rides in their water buffalo carts along the streets.

This park is a zoo where you can come close to the animals who roam free throughout the park. But there is also a petting zoo which kids will love, and the only railroad in Okinawa, a remainder of the railroad which once went from Nago to Naha. Today, the original locomotive is used to pull visitors around the park. Most of the animals are birds, and you can feed them (although not from the train). Be careful of your fingers, they may look appetizing.

The main Okinawa island is a very long island - it takes several hours to go from the northern to the southern tip, even if you use the freeway. It is narrow but not so narrow that there is not a lot of nature in the middle. You have rainforests and montaneous vistas, although there are no real mountains.
But there are several more islands than the main Okinawa island. Not all of them are archipelagos in their own right, like the Yaeyama islands to the south. The main island includes Ishigaki, the amazingly beautiful island that feels like a Japanese Hawaii. All of the Okinawan islands are on the same latitude as Hawaii, but as they are closer to the South China Sea, they are susceptible to typhoons. But they blow over quickly. On the other hand, it rains quite a bit in Okinawa. This is a tropical island, after all, and you can not have a rainforest without rain, after all.

In summary, northern Okinawa is a great place to go for a vacation with your kids. We always think of going back to the villa on Sesoko island, with its amazing beaches and the fantastic Villa Kohola. But there are several more amazing beaches, including the breathtaking Emerald Beach next to the Churumi Aquarium in Ocean Expo Park.

this year, Disneyland in Tokyo and Tokyo Disney Sea will be extra crowded on June 16. Why? It is an ordinary summer saturday, although in the rainy season. So why will the Disney parks be extra crowded on that day?

Tokyo Disney Resort (the two parks plus the shopping center and the hotels) is located in Chiba, not in Tokyo. Anyone would be challenged to tell this and most people in Tokyo or Chiba will not be able to say where the border between the prefectures are.
But as I have written about before, you need to be early to get the most out of your Disney visit, and if you live nearby you have a better chance to be early than people who live farther away. That is one reason why it makes so much sense to stay in the hotels near the park (which we do even though we live in Tokyo and can get to Maihama, the station serving Tokyo Disney, in an hour).

But we will not go there on June 16. The park will be crowded as it is a weekend, and with the extra people taking advantage of the Chiba Prefecture Citizens Day, it is likely to be one of those days where the tickets run out. Even though it will probably be raining.
The day will see a lot of prefectural facilities open for free to the public. The prefecture itself runs a lot of facilities like parks and sports facilities, including the Makihari Messe a few stations from Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disney Sea. It will be crowded but you do not hsve to go. There are plenty of other things to do in Tokyo. Even if it is raining.
​By the way, you may wonder what this local holiday is. Japanese prefectures have some degree of independence. They can decide for themselves how some of the tax money they recieve can be spent. And they can declare local holidays, but not too many. Since the prefectural govenors are elected in direct elections, they tend to spend on popular projects. Or white elephants, like the Ibaraki airport.

Japan has five pronounced seasons, as I have written about before. Each of those seasons have their own pronounced activities and products which follow the weather. Experiencing Japan with your kids in spring is not at all the same as in fall. The weather is different, the light is different, even the food is different. In the agricultural society that Japan was until the middle of the 19th century, starvation or something very near it was often a reality. Meat (except pork) was not only forbidden for religious reasons, it was also very expensive. Poor people got their proteins from beans or fish.

Winter, as it tends to be in agricultural societies, was lean and hard. There were no vegetables (this was before cold transport) and no fresh fish. There may have been eggs but hens always lay less in winter.
When the first vegetables, normally udo, broke the ground it was almost a cause for celebration. But as society became more complex, the direct connection between people and land was lost.

Today, there are two ways that you notice the seasons: The air conditioning in the office switches on, and the goods in the supermarket grocery department changes: The produce shipped from Chile, Australia, and America is replaced by local products.
The change in the content of the grocery shelves is the most drastic, and you can use it as an excellent way of teaching your kids how both nature and the distribution system works. And you do not even have to stay on a farm.
While processed foods, including eggs, meat, and tomatoes, do not change particularly with the seasons, there are foods that do. I already mentioned vegetables and fruit.

There is another type of produce which is seasonal, and even though it is seafood, does not require you to go out in a fishing boat. Plus, if it is a warm day, you can have a great day on the beach.
Tokyo used to be halfway surrounded by mudflats. As late as the 18th century you could sail a ship all the way up to what today is Tokyo Station. The mudflats were, when in season, the source of protein for most of the poor people of Tokyo. The mussels and other shellfish that are harvested from the mudflats are a delicacy today, going into the sushi restaurants and fancy eateries of Tokyo.

Today, the mud flats on the Tokyo side are almost completely gone, thanks to Tokyo Harbor and Haneda Airport. But if you ride the train past Tokyo Disneyland (which is also built on reclaimed mudflats), you come to Chiba prefecture, where the beaches are still in their original shape.
On the mudflats there is a fence blocking off the part where the tide churns the mud, promoting new growth. It is not accessible until the management opens the fence, when anyone with a ticket (that you have to buy in advance) can pick and take home four kilograms of mussels per person. But the mudflats do not open until the tide has withdrawn so much that you can walk on the mud, which happens about 2 PM during the season. The flats are only open for about three hours, so you do not have much time to gather those four kilos.

When the fence opens, whole teams of professionals come in windbreakers and knee-high rubber boots. Even if you rent a rake and a bucket, it will still not cost you more than a thousand yen. Since the price in the store is about five to six times that, it is a bargain.
If you have a place with cooking facilities, you can harvest and cook your own mussels - in central Tokyo! Just remember that the mussels need to lie in clear slightly salted water for 24 hours so they can get rid of the sand in their bodies. Mussels eat by sucking in water and then filtering out bacteria and small plankton which they eat. In the Tokyo mud flats, this means they suck in plenty of sand. Even if your kids only pick the mussel shells (as ours did), you have to wash off the sand. Do it outside the bathtub, even an empty mussel shell can accumulate astonishing amounts of sand.
After 24 hours in a dark place (under a newspaper or in a cupboard) you can cook the mussels. Just make sure to throw away the mussels which have not opened even a fraction , they are already dead. Japanese miso soup with fresh mussels you have picked yourself tastes much better than anything you can buy in the store.

Gathering mussels is not the only seasonal activity you can do in Tokyo, but it is the best during spring. In fall, you can pick grapes, and earlier in fall cherries, peaches and kiwi fruits.
During the mussels season, the ramen and udon shops flow over with noodles In mussel soup, with different kinds and amount of mussels. The taste is a welcome change in the regular diet of miso, soy, dashi and tonkotsu soup that you will regularly get with your ramen or udon.
If you want to spend a day at the beach in Tokyo, bathing in the sea is hardly much of an option, unless you are below school age. The water is cold and it is windy, even if the air and the water (in the tidal pools) can be surprisingly warm. But most people bring a tent to keep out the worst heat of the sun and the wind.

If you want to spend a day at the beach in Tokyo, bathing in the sea is hardly much of an option, unless you are below school age. The water is cold and it is windy, even if the air and the water (in the tidal pools) can be surprisingly warm. But most people bring a tent to keep out the worst heat of the sun and the wind.
During mussel harvest season insects are not yet an issue. But if you spend a day on the beach in Tokyo after the rainy season ends in July, sand flies and mosquitoes are likely to be a pain. Even if you do not let them sting.

As I wrote about in my post on the Japanese travel year, next week is Golden Week, when people in Japan travel over the holidays. The switch in the economy has meant people work more and travel less, but we are still not seeing inflation for real - even if it is happening. Japan is still cheap for international visitors, if you avoid the luxuries.

Perhaps surprisingly given the Tokyo weather, where it is dangerous to go out during typhoons and where it can rain for days on end during the rainy season (and other seasons too), there are few indoor playgrounds. Perhaps the high property rates makes it uneconomical to dedicate large indoor areas to play.

The indoor playgrounds are different from the IKEA Småland, which is more like daycare for an hour. The IKEA stores have them in Japan too, but they are even less centrally located than the Börnelund centers. One parent has to stay with the kids, but if you want to go shopping, you have to count on your kids playing for more than an hour. Even if you go to Odaiba, where the shopping is in the same building as the playground.
That play area is free, but other play centers cost money to use. Most charge per hour, the prices vary. So does the equipment. Usually they have a ball pool, inflated jumping castle, and lots of regular toys. Like everything in Japan, you will be amazed at how the Japanese designers can squeeze in so much in such a small space. Many of the indoor playgrounds are hardly bigger than an average apartment.
Most of the playgrounds charge about 1000 yen per hour, both for kids and adults. There are often day passes available, which makes it easy to pop out for a little while and get lunch or some snacks. Although many play centers offer seating areas for adults, they typically do not have restaurants.

This is the biggest of the indoor play areas in Tokyo, located in the Tokyo Dome entertainment complex, also home to an amusement park, the Japan Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Yomiuri Gigants baseball team.
You will not notice in Asobono, which has several themed play areas, the biggest ball pool in Tokyo, and toys for kids from age zero up. Parents are expected to enjoy it with their kids, but it is not hard to guess the kids will enjoy it more.
A tip is to get a one-day pass is 1650 yen, which is a great deal since you can leave to get snacks and lunch.

Bornelund play centers are located in the Tokyo suburbs. If you happen to be staying near one, this is a great way to let your kids play with others. Check out the repective store websites. Information is unfortunately only available in Japanese.

The only Legoland park in Japan so far is in Nagoya, halfway between Tokyo and Osaka. But Tokyo has a Legoland Discovery Center in Odaiba, which is like a Legoland indoors. With Lego model cities, rides, a 4D cinema and a Lego factory where kids can make their own Lego bricks. The feeling is less the models of the original Legoland and more the stop-motion adventure of the Lego movie.

The Tokyo Toy Museum is more about teaching visitors the value of pedagogical play with natural materials than displaying vintage toy collections. The foundation that runs it have several other stores around Tokyo, but it is only at the Tokyo Toy Museum that you get to play with all the toys.

To be fit in Norwegian is to be trim, in the same sense as you trim the sails of a sailboat. It is about physical fitness as well as mental, although the latter is expected to happen as a consequence of the former. That is the inspiration behind Aneby Trim Park (although Aneby is in Sweden, so the vibe is more generally Scandinavian).

Squeezed into a game center, you will be amazed at how much the creators of Playground 4 Kids have been able to fit into a small area and still give kids room to play with it. The centerpiece is a jumping castle in the shape of a locomotive that kids will love.

Depending on where you are staying, you may be able to get to the indoor playground without seeing a drop of rain. If you go to the Odaiba play centers (Aneby Trim Park and Legoland Dicovery Center), it is possible to stay under one roof all the way from your hotel (at least some of the Shinjuku hotels).

There are lots of great beaches in North America and I was happy to contribute Waikiki to this collaboration post. We had a wonderful time there and would go back in an instant if our kids did not need their own seats now.
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The beach is really wonderful despite being located in the middle of a city. What was once sugar cane fields have turned to a condo city. Which means there are plenty of great places for families to stay.

I read a thread in one of the Facebook groups where I am a member about worrying during travel. You can worry about lots of things in addition to the things you normally worry about with your kids, like them falling sick or falling down a cliff or falling prey to a predator. Or falling meteorites.
When you travel, the dangers are very different than you are used to from home. Where I come from, the two things you have to worry about is bears attacking in spring and running out of gas for your snowmobile in the middle of the forest. Neither is a problem in Tokyo.

Things are so different when you travel. There are exotic animals with stings and teeth, exotic flowers with thorns and poisonous berries, exotic people who will lure you with exotic dances into exotic bars and spike your drinks and take your money. Well, the last one may be less of a concern if you have three kids in tow.

They bring their own concerns, though. You continously have to worry about the kids falling off a cliff, or the bed. You have to worry about all the stinging insects and especially the diseases they may carry. They do not have to be lethal to put you off travel for a long time - dengue fever is one of the most unpleasant diseases you can have. You have to worry that your child does not run out into the road, or the pram trundles down the stairs, or that they put their fingers in an electric socket, eat a dangerous chemical, or run into a sharp corner and hurt themselves. And you have to worry about traffic.

Luckily, most of the things you need to worry about when you travel are the same as those you worry about at home. And the remedies are the same. Childproofing an AirBnB is not very different from childproofing your home, although you want to be careful with the glue on the corner and edge protectors. You do not want it to remove paint or veneer, which may happen. Our furniture at home is a testimony to this, exposing spots and tearmarks that someone without triplets may think looks terrible (we are past caring). That means you can not use your regular childproofing gear. We used masking tape and wadded up newspapers before our kids got large enough to understand that a sharp corner hurts if you run into it. As you probably have guessed, it happened pretty fast.

That the place you have rented is not childproof and that your kids will break something so you have to pay is a big worry when you rent an apartment or condo. It is less of a worry in a hotel, as I have written about before, but we do not fit in a hotel. Unless we book several rooms, and then the money worry becomes too big.
The descriptions of the places leave a lot to desire. We had a lovely place in Hawaii but when our kids took the doors off the bookshelf and started chewing the books, I started to worry. For sure, the furniture was pretty crappy to begin with, so even if we had broken it I do not think we would have had to pay much. But it is still a worry. And the description, even the photos, showed nothing of the kind. So maybe I should have worried more about the mismatch between the description and the actual place.

In most places, your children hurting themselves on the furniture is something to worry about indoors, but as soon as you go out, traffic is a worry. In southeast Asia, people drive like madmen, and adults have to watch out that they do not get run over by a motorcycle messenger running full steam in the different direction. In Japan, the streets are so narrow that you have to duck into a doorway so that you do not get squeezed by a passing car. In Seden, cars skid and swirl on the icy roads so you have to dive into the ditch not to get run over. The list goes on. There is no way a toddler can fathom what is going on.

Most people maybe do not worry that their kids will eat the furnishings, but if there are bugs and dirt you should worry about your kids eating them, at least until they are a certain age. While children actually improve their immune system by ingesting various bacteria and other bugs, they can also get parasites and worms that you do not want in their bodies. So while they are the age when anything goes into their mouths, you should worry about them eating dirt. As they grow a little bit older you can stop worrying about that and go back to worrying about biting bugs. Ticks are really bad, and in Southeast Asia you have centipedes that can be up to 30 centimeters long, if not longer. Luckily, you do not see them all that often. Not as often as mosquitoes, which you will find everywhere in Thailand, and often indoors. We had big problems with that in Thailand - one day my wife took our daughter to the hospital, since she was covered in purple splotches. It was after that we started with double mosquito nets.

Window screens are almost completely unknown in Thailand, although mosquito nets (around your bed) is very common. In winter the temperature is low enough to sleep with your windows open, although in summer you want to keep the air conditioner going to keep the temperature comfortable even at night, although it dries out the air of the room which is not good for your kids either, especially if they are too small to drink water on their own. Drying out the membranes of the nose and throat means it becomes easier to catch infections. And you do not want that either.

Luckily the mosquitoes are easy to keep away.
We actually used to have two mosquito nets around our kids beds, in layers. As mentioned before, mosquitoes can spread some really nasty diseases. But that only keeps them away when they are in their beds. Of course, infants spend most of their time there anyway.
Many insects track their prey by their chemical emissions, especially body odor. You can not get rid of it by washing, they smell your body. Including the carbon dioxide on your breath. I actually saw a report that the body odor of children infected with malaria changes so they become even more attractive and easier to find for the mosquitoes carrying the malaria parasite.

So the best way of keeping mosquitoes away is to make sure they do not get your scent. And your body odor is actually easy to hide. There are chemicals like DEET and several organic versions using different herbs and plants which confuse the insects. You can not mask the plume of carbon dioxide from your mouth, but you can make your body smell differently. Spray your children before they go out. It makes sense to use a combined sun screen and insect repellent, especially in the tropics, because then you do not have to worry about sunburn on top of insect bite worries.

That is not even mentioning sunburn and sunstroke. Sunburn may be more painful to deal with (unless you like comforting crying toddlers), but sunstroke is a lot more dangerous. That is why you want your kids to drink plenty of water, and why you want them to wear a hat (even if they do not like it).
This is only the beginning of the list. I have not even mentioned worrying about money or missing the plane. But like all worries, there is a cure: To prepare.
For sure, you prepare very differently for an encounter with mosquitoes than for an encounter with a motorcycle messenger barreling down the sidewalk. You prepare differently for encounters with sharp corners than you prepare for countering sunburn. But the important thing is that you can prepare. And you should.

In Japan, most people do not have cars, despite this physically small country being home to the headquarters of a lot of the global car industry (and arguably the leaders in technology as well). And most people do not need a car.
If you are making a long trip, say going from Tokyo to Kyoto, Osaka or Sendai, or anywhere in the same radius, there is no discussion: taking the Shinkansen train is by far the most economical and fastest way of getting around in Japan. As a matter of fact, there is no alternative. There are no flights from Tokyo to Nagoya any more.

The other alternative is renting a car, but until your children turn 6, they travel free on the train. And until they are 12 the tickets are half price. So renting a car for long distance travel does not actually pay, unless your children are over 12 or you are going somewhere that does not have easy train access - yes, those places exist. Probably the most famous is Kusatsu Onsen. And if you want to bring luggage, skiing equipment or surfboards will be a hassle to take on the train and expensive to send ahead.
​Going to Hokkaido or Kyushu, the southernmost and northernmost of the main Japanese islands, airlines are time-competitive with the Shinkansen - and more. If you are going to the outlying islands in Okinawa, to Minami Oshima or the Ogasawara islands (formally a part of Tokyo city), there are no trains. And taking the ferry takes a day. At least.

But when you are in Okinawa, you need a car to get around. There are long-distance buses, but then you have the problem of getting to your final destination. And that is true for many other places in Japan as well. Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto are criss-crossed with subways and trains, but you only have to go to Ibaraki prefecture, 45 minutes north of Tokyo, to find yourself as lost without a car as if you were in Dallas, Atlanta, or Los Angeles. While there is public transport, it is scarce and takes detours. Even in Tokyo prefecture there are places where the bus only comes twice a day.

So you need a car, if that is where you are staying. But if you do, you also have a lot more freedom to move around. Just remember that until the age of six, your kids have to be in child seats or booster seats, and they all need seatbelts. If you are a family of six, a seven-seater is a perfect fit (because you also need somewhere to put your luggage).

Renting a car does not make sense if you have children under six for long trips. Until the age of six, which is when children in Japan start school, they travel for free on trains. If you want them to have a seat of their own, the seat reservation is half price. Unless you take the fastest Shinkansen trains. I wrote about the convenience of taking the train in Japan before, as well as taking the train in Tokyo. But I am not sure I mentioned that the kids pay half price between six and 12.

So how does the train tickets compare to renting a car? Let us say you want to take a three hour train ride, which usually will cost in the area of 3000 yen per person one way (depending on distance). So you pay 18000 yen for a family of three grownups and three kids under six (you have to go back as well). The cost of renting a car is about 5000 yen per day, but of course it depends on size and model. And you have to pay for gasoline and parking, if it is not included in the rent for the place where you are staying.

In the metropolitan areas, the pricing means even for short distances, car travel is not economical. For short distances, you rarely pay more than 500 yen on the train, and there are trains almost everywhere you want to go. If you are staying within walking distance from the station, you have to make 10 trips (20 if you need a car as big as we do) around central Tokyo. Not counting gasoline and parking, both of which can be pretty expensive, especially in the dense metropolitan areas.
​Again, if you are going to stay in a part of the country where distances are more of a factor than central Tokyo or Osaka, you will probably find a parking spot available at your house or apartment. Even in those comparatively sparsely populated parts of the country, short-term public parking is comparatively expensive. Rent a spot for a year and it is much more reasonable. The reason is that you are not allowed to buy a car before you can show that you have a spot to park it in.

Apart from the credit card you need to pay for your car rental, you need one more thing. And it is not just your drivers license. For people from most countries, you need an international drivers permit, often known as an international drivers license - although there is no such thing.
​What you get is an International Driving Permit (IDP) according to the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic. This is a paper booklet with your photo in it which you have to show together with your national drivers license when you rent the car, and to the police officer if they should ask you. If you do not get the IDP from the police or drivers license office at home, you will get it from the automobile federation or similar.
That is the only formal documentation you will need to drive in Japan. There is no extra training to help you drive on the left, or to handle some of the Japanese-specific traffic rules.

One of those rules concern car seats. Children up until the age of six must be in a child seat, which can be a booster seat if they are big enough. The law is flexible about the age where you go from a forward-facing seat to a booster seat. All passengers must wear seatbelts regardless of age and how big they are, with two exceptions: If the child is ill, so she has to lie down; or if you are breastfeeding or changing diapers. It is not clear how new diapers would stop a child from being catapulted forward if the car comes to a sudden stop (like runs into something). It is safer to find a rest stop.
​You will not get fined if you are caught with a child without child seat, but you will get a point struck from your license, which may not affect you as much as an international visitor as it would a Japanese driver.

Rent the seats from the car rental company. They are guaranteed to be spotlessly clean - no Japanese rental car company would consider providing seats which were dirty or had wears or tears. As is the car, by the way.
​Do not bring your own car seats unless you want your children to sit in them on the plane. You will not be able to use them in trains, buses, or even taxis. Japanese taxis are exempt from the otherwise stringent requirement to have children sit in car seats. The reason, supposedly, is that the drivers are so well trained that they have no accidents.

Japan is a signatory to the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, but it is not a member of a number of other international conventions on road traffic. The traffic signs are completely local, and the stop sign is an inverted red triangle with a white border and the word 止まれ (tomare) which means stop in Japanese. It makes sense to know some of them, even if most of them will be evident from the context. You will not need any assistance to figure out that two crossed yellow bars with black chevrons on them mean “railway crossing”, but you will need to know that all crossing cars have to stop before the crossing and that the driver is supposed to look and listen (opening the window if you have to). This is strictly enforced.

Another thing that may surprise you when you drive in Japan is the speed limits. And that people do not follow them, if the traffic moves more smoothly at some other speed.
Japanese cities are densely built and there is not much space for cars, so the speed limits inside cities are often 30 kilometers per hour, or even 20. But evrn bigger roads have a speed limit of 50, and the maximum speed - even on the excellent freeways - is 80 km per hour.
​Except when it would be unharmonious to drive that slow. This is Japan, where a nice surface and smooth operation has higher priority than formal rules. So when cars start lining up behind you, you had better speed up. Nothing makes a Japanese driver as angry as being stuck behind a road hog, even if you are sticking strictly to the speed limit. If you pick up enough of a train the police may even wave you to the side. As a foreigner you will find it extremely difficult to know what speed you should really drive at.

Apart from that, you have to be careful about seniors wandering out into the road in unpredictable places. They are a much bigger danger than kids running out into the road. Senior drivers, who feature a mark like a flower on their cars, tend to have bad eyesight and hearing, and overestimate their reaction speed and driving skills. They are involved in a disparate number of accidents, sometimes really stupid ones like mistaking the accelerator for the brakes and ramming convenience stores. If you see a car with a tag like the that, avoid it.

The senior driver tag is not the only one you will see on cars, by the way. While there is no sticker saying “the driver is a foreigner” that would be really helpful in defusing the road rage you may cause by sticking strictly to the rules, there is a tag that you can put on your car which lowers the expectation threshold of Japanese drivers and make them more forgiving of your bad driving. That is the “new driver” tag which you have to put on the car until you have had your license for a year. It looks like an arrow pointing down, the left half yellow, the right green.

In Japan, this mark (the 初心者 or shoushinsha mark) is used to show that something is intended for beginners, often appearing on websites or in brochures where they give the basic explanation of a concept, or a super-easy explanation of how to fill out a form. It can be used in any situation where you are a beginner - not just on cars - as a shorthand for where to go. A pair of magnetic marks will cost about 500 yen. You can order from Amazon, or if you like, fill in the form below and I can send you a pair.

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