The Air at New Chitose Airport

The moment you step off the plane at New Chitose Airport, the air already smells different — cleaner, sharper, carrying the faint mineral edge of volcanic soil. A campervan is waiting at a rental office just outside Sapporo, and the first lesson about Japanese road trips arrives immediately: a Japanese campervan is not an American RV. It’s compact, efficient, and almost absurdly well-packaged, with a kitchen that folds out of a cabinet and a sleeping area that requires rearranging three separate panels every single night. You get used to this dance by day three, but on day one, standing in the rental lot staring at what looks like a slightly oversized minivan, you wonder if you’ve made a terrible mistake. You haven’t. But you will make other mistakes, and they will be the parts you remember best.

Sapporo greets you with the kind of grid-system streets that make urban navigation almost pleasant, and you immediately head for Odori Park because that’s what you’re supposed to do. The park stretches for over a kilometer through the city center, and in early autumn, the leaves are just beginning to turn. You find yourself walking past fountains and flower beds, feeling the strange tension of being in a major city while knowing your bed for the night is parked somewhere nearby. The Sapporo Beer Museum sits at the end of a short walk, and here is where your first piece of campervan-specific advice becomes relevant: you cannot buy alcohol at a convenience store in Hokkaido after 11 PM, and many supermarkets stop selling it earlier than that. Plan your evening beverages before you leave the city, because the campsite at Lake Shikotsu has exactly zero options for procuring a cold beer. The museum itself is a red-brick building from the Meiji era, and the tasting room offers a flight of beers that includes a black lager you’ll find yourself craving for the rest of the trip. You drink it standing at the counter, watching older Japanese couples do the same, and it feels like the perfect warm-up act for what’s ahead.

The drive to Lake Shikotsu takes about an hour, and it’s the kind of road that makes you grateful for Japan’s meticulous engineering. The highway tunnels through mountains, then spits you out into a caldera lake surrounded by volcanic peaks. Your campsite for the night, Shikotsu-ko Campjo, sits right on the lake’s edge, and here is where Japan’s campervan infrastructure reveals itself. There are no hookups — no electricity, no water connection at your site. You are truly camping. The toilets are clean, because Japanese public toilets are always clean, but they are also squat-style and unheated, and in October, the night air is already biting. You learn to time your bathroom visits carefully. Dinner is a simple affair: you’ve bought fresh scallops from a roadside stand near the lake, and you cook them in a small pan over your portable stove, eating them with rice and a splash of soy sauce while sitting in the van’s open side door, watching the last light fade from the water. The temperature drops fast, and you discover that your campervan’s heater is adequate but not generous — you’ll sleep in a fleece layer for the entire trip.

Morning at Lake Shikotsu is worth every moment of the cold night. Steam rises from the water, and the mountains reflect perfectly on the still surface. You’ve already made your first adaptation: you showered last night at a nearby onsen rather than trying to wash in the van’s tiny sink. The onsen cost 800 yen and was worth double that for the experience alone — soaking in an outdoor bath while the air temperature hovers near freezing, watching steam rise from your own body into the dark sky. Japan’s network of public baths becomes your shower infrastructure for the entire trip, and you learn to plan each day’s route around which onsen you’ll visit before settling in for the night. Day two takes you south toward Noboribetsu, and the drive along the coast of Uchiura Bay is the kind of road that demands frequent stops. You pull over at a michi-no-eki — one of Japan’s roadside stations — and buy a steamed bun filled with Hokkaido pumpkin, eating it leaning against your van while fishing boats bob in the bay below. These roadside stations become your lifeline: clean toilets, local produce, sometimes a hot spring, always a vending machine with hot coffee.

Noboribetsu’s Jigokudani, or Hell Valley, is exactly as dramatic as its name suggests. You park the van and walk into a landscape that looks like another planet: steam vents hissing from the ground, pools of boiling sulfuric water, the entire valley floor streaked with yellow and orange mineral deposits. The boardwalk path takes you right through the middle of it, and the smell is powerful — think hard-boiled eggs left in a locker for a week. It’s unforgettable, and you spend longer here than you planned, watching the steam shift and pulse as if the earth itself were breathing. From here, the drive to Hakodate takes you along the coast, and you make the mistake of assuming you can find a grocery store easily. Japan’s convenience stores — Lawsons, 7-Eleven, FamilyMart — are everywhere and excellent, but they are not supermarkets. You can get onigiri, instant noodles, and pre-made sandwiches, but fresh vegetables and raw protein require an actual supermarket, and those are less frequent in rural Hokkaido than you’d think. You learn to spot the green Lawson signs and know the difference between a full grocery and a convenience stop.

Hakodate arrives in the late afternoon, and you drive straight up to the Mount Hakodate ropeway station. The night view from the summit is one of Japan’s three great night views, alongside Nagasaki and Kobe, and it earns the reputation. The city spreads out below you like a string of lights draped over a dark fabric, the sea on both sides, everything glittering. You stand at the observation deck for twenty minutes, not taking photos, just watching. The wind is cold and sharp, and you can smell the ocean. Your van is parked in a lot near the ropeway, and you’ve already found a campground on the outskirts of town that offers coin showers — a rare luxury in Hokkaido campsites, where you’ll typically rely on onsen instead. Dinner is kaisendon from a small seafood market near the waterfront, eaten at a counter with your backpack at your feet and the van keys in your pocket, because eating in the restaurant means not having to cook and clean dishes afterward. Hakodate is famous for its squid, and the sashimi is so fresh it’s almost translucent. You eat it with rice and miso soup, and the bill comes to 1,500 yen. You make a note: this is the kind of meal that makes campervan travel work — the van becomes home base, but you save the truly good food for the places that do it best.

Day three begins with the ferry from Hakodate to Aomori, and this is where you learn that Japanese ferry terminals are surprisingly well-equipped for campervans. You drive onto the boat, park on the vehicle deck, and then walk upstairs to a passenger lounge with tatami mats, vending machines, and a small restaurant serving curry rice and ramen. The crossing takes four hours, and you spend it sitting by a window watching the ocean turn from gray to blue as Hokkaido shrinks behind you. The ferry company charges by vehicle length, and your compact van falls into the cheapest category — another argument for the small size you were skeptical about on day one. You arrive in Aomori and feel the shift immediately: the air is warmer, the trees are different, and the signs are still in Japanese but the dialect has changed. You drive east toward Lake Towada, and the road climbs through forests of beech and oak, the leaves already brilliant red and gold in late October.

Lake Towada is a caldera lake, like Shikotsu, but bigger and deeper and somehow more contemplative. Your campsite, Towada Lake Campjo, sits on the northern shore, and you arrive late enough that the office is closed. This is normal in Japan’s autumn season — many campsites operate on the honor system, with an envelope system for payment. You find the registration box, stuff 3,000 yen into an envelope with your vehicle plate number written on it, and drive onto the empty campsite. You are the only campervanner here. A few tents dot the far end of the field, but the rest is yours. Tonight, you cook a curry from a packet you bought at a supermarket in Aomori, adding fresh carrots and potatoes, and you eat it watching the stars come out over the lake. The Milky Way is visible, and you can hear the water lapping against the shore. You also discover that your van’s battery is not designed for extended use of interior lights — you kill it by leaving the reading light on for an hour while you write in your journal, and you spend twenty minutes trying to jump-start it with a portable battery pack you were smart enough to bring. You learn: LED headlamps are more practical than interior lights. You also learn that Japanese campervans typically don’t have auxiliary batteries. Plan your power use accordingly.

Morning at Lake Towada is crisp and golden, and you drive along the Oirase Gorge before the crowds arrive. The road follows the Oirase River for about fourteen kilometers, past waterfalls and moss-covered rocks and forest so dense it filters the light into green. You pull over at nearly every viewpoint, and by the time you reach the end of the gorge, you’ve taken more photos than in the previous three days combined. The river is clear enough to see the trout swimming, and the sound of running water becomes the soundtrack of your morning. You stop at a small cafe near the gorge’s exit for coffee and a slice of apple pie — Aomori is Japan’s apple capital, and the pie is filled with local fruit that tastes like it was picked yesterday. You buy a bag of apples to take with you, and they become your go-to snack for the next two days.

Hachinohe is your midday stop, and it surprises you. You expected a generic port city, but what you find is a working fishing town with one of Japan’s best morning markets — the Tatehana Morning Market, which you’ve missed because it’s already noon. You settle for a lunch of freshly grilled mackerel from a stall near the harbor, eating it with your hands while watching the fishing boats unload their catch. The fish is so good you consider staying overnight, but you have Morioka to reach before dark. The drive north along the coast takes you past rice fields and small fishing villages, and you begin to understand the rhythm of Tohoku — slower than Hokkaido, older, more rooted in the land. Your campground near Morioka is a small municipal site with basic facilities, and you arrive to find that the showers are coin-operated and timed. You learn to shower quickly. You also learn that Japanese campgrounds often close their gates at 8 PM, and being locked out of your site is a real possibility if you misjudge your arrival.

Morioka itself is a city of cold noodles and cast-iron pots. You spend the evening walking through the center, eating jajamen — a local noodle dish with miso and cucumber — at a counter restaurant where the owner watches you intently to make sure you eat it correctly. You do not eat it correctly. He corrects you with good humor, showing you how to stir the noodles and sauce until everything is evenly coated. You eat three servings because that’s the tradition. By the time you walk back to your van, the city lights are reflecting off the Kitakami River, and you feel like you’ve finally found the rhythm of the trip: drive, eat, soak in an onsen, sleep, repeat.

Day five takes you south from Morioka to Hiraizumi, and this is where the cultural weight of the journey starts to become apparent. Hiraizumi was once the political and cultural center of northern Japan, a rival to Kyoto itself, and Chuson-ji Temple is its crown jewel. You park the van and walk up the long approach through ancient cedar trees, the air cool and still. The main hall, Konjikido, is a golden pavilion that lights up even in the muted autumn light. You cannot take photos inside, and this is a blessing — you stand in front of the gold-leaf-covered altar, surrounded by inlaid mother-of-pearl and lacquer, and you just look. The temple was built in 1124, and you feel the weight of that time pressing down on you. You walk through the museum afterward, where the artifacts are preserved with the care that only Japan seems to muster: ancient sutras written in gold, statues of Buddhist deities, swords that still hold their edge after eight centuries.

The drive from Hiraizumi to Sendai along Route 4 is not scenic. It’s a highway, flat and straight, lined with chain restaurants and pachinko parlors. But this is part of the trip too — the mundane stretches that make the beautiful parts feel earned. You stop at a michi-no-eki near the Miyagi border and buy a box of fresh strawberries that taste like summer, even though it’s October. You eat them in the van, parked under a highway overpass, watching trucks rumble past. Sendai arrives in the early evening, and you navigate through city traffic for the first time in days, feeling the tension return to your shoulders. Your campground for the night is near Akiu Onsen, a hot spring town in the mountains east of the city, and you drive up into the hills as the light fades. The campsite is small and quiet, surrounded by bamboo groves, and you set up for the night with the practiced efficiency of someone who has done this four times already.