Roadtripping in Mainland Japan

In July we flew to Nagoya, rented a car and spent 9 days driving around mainland Japan doing some sightseeing and hiking. This was a trip that Duke really wanted to go on and I'm so glad we did! It turned out to be an amazing trip with some incredible scenery. It was one of my trips from our time out here in Japan. However, in the spirit of keeping things real, the day-to-day of this trip was really hard with an almost 2 year old. Although we knew to lower our expectations and go slow, we were very much on the go the whole time, which is rough on little ones. It made for a lot of fights for Duke yet, somehow we both have great memories of this trip and are so glad we did it.

Here's an overview of the cities on our itinerary:

Day 1: Fly into Nagoya
Day 2: Drive to Magome/Tsumago-hike, drive to Kamikochi
Day3: Kamikochi
Day 4: Drive to Toyama (get lost, whoops)
Day 5: Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route
Day 6: Drive to Kyoto
Day 7: Kyoto
Day 8: Kyoto
Day 9: Drive to Nara & back to Nagoya
Day 10: Fly back to Okinawa

If we didn't have a 2 year old with us we probably would have seen some of the sites in Nagoya, but dinner and walking around a bit was all that we had time for. We stayed at an airbnb everywhere we went except Kamikochi (where we stayed in a Ryokan). I loved the one in Nagoya. It was a traditional Japanese set up. It's always fun to get a taste of the culture since we live in American style bunkers :). Here's some pictures from our little time in Nagoya.

I'm sooo excited to share the rest of the pictures from this trip! Japan is a beautiful place guys.