Japan Hiroshima to Nagasaki Road Trip + Map: 5 Days From the Peace Park Through Kyushu’s History
Estimated reading time: 14 mins
Most people do Japan by train, and I get why. But this particular stretch of the country makes a brilliant drive, and hardly anyone bothers. You start in Hiroshima, cross under the sea into Kyushu, and finish in Nagasaki, which means you bookend the trip with the two cities that carry the heaviest history in the country. What sits between them is softer: floating shrines, a wooden arched bridge, hot spring towns, porcelain villages that have been firing kilns for four hundred years.
Here’s the thing about doing it by car. The train will fire you between the big cities beautifully, but it won’t drop you at a kiln in Arita, or let you pull over above the Kanmon Straits to watch tankers slide past. This route is built around the bits in the middle. And the driving itself is genuinely calm. Japanese roads are immaculate, everyone indicates, nobody tailgates, and if you’re British you’re already on the correct side of the road.
Five days is right. Two of them are city days where the car sits in a hotel car park and you go on foot, which is exactly the breather you want after Hiroshima, because Hiroshima takes something out of you. Honestly, plan a quiet evening after that first day. You’ll want it.
I’d book your hire car well ahead for Japan, because automatic small cars go first and the good rates disappear in spring and autumn. If you want a few more ideas for the wider country before you commit, my destination guides are a decent rabbit hole to fall down.
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Japan Road Trip: Quick Facts at a Glance
Start: Hiroshima, Honshu
End: Nagasaki, Kyushu
Best length: 5 days (6 if you can stretch it and add an onsen night)
Total distance: Around 600 km (roughly 375 miles)
Best for: History travellers, first-time Kyushu drivers, food obsessives, slow travellers
Driving difficulty: Easy. Left-hand drive, superb road surfaces, tight city centres and narrow rural lanes
Best time to go: Late March to May, or October to November. Summer is humid and heavy
Car needed: Yes for the middle, and an international driving permit alongside your licence
Main route stops: Hiroshima → Miyajima → Iwakuni → Shimonoseki → Mojiko → Dazaifu → Fukuoka → Karatsu → Arita → Ureshino → Nagasaki
Check this first: Japanese hire fleets are overwhelmingly automatic and mostly compact, which is exactly what you want for these roads. Compare rates and pick up your car in Hiroshima and drop it in Nagasaki. One-way fees within this region are usually modest, but check them at booking rather than at the desk.
The Route: What to Expect
The shape is a straight south-westerly run with no backtracking. Hiroshima sits on the Inland Sea, and you follow the coast down through Iwakuni to the tip of Honshu at Shimonoseki. Then comes the good bit: you drop under the Kanmon Straits through a tunnel and pop out in Kyushu, which feels different almost immediately. Warmer, greener, a bit looser round the edges.
From there the route curves west through Fukuoka, out along the Saga coast into porcelain country, and finally south into Nagasaki. Two of the five days barely involve driving at all. The other three are gentle, two to three hours behind the wheel with plenty of stops, and none of them will wreck your afternoon.
| Day | Route | Drive time | Vibe |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hiroshima and Miyajima | Walking and ferry | Peace Park, then a floating shrine |
| 2 | Hiroshima → Iwakuni → Shimonoseki → Mojiko | ~3 hrs | Coast road, bridges, under the sea |
| 3 | Mojiko → Dazaifu → Fukuoka | ~1.5 hrs | Shrine cedars, then ramen stalls |
| 4 | Fukuoka → Karatsu → Arita → Ureshino | ~2.5 hrs | Castle, kilns, hot spring town |
| 5 | Ureshino → Nagasaki | ~1.5 hrs | Harbour city, heavy history, best night view in Japan |
Note: FREE Google Map Lower Down the Article.
Japan Road Trip Itinerary
Day 1: Hiroshima and Miyajima
Driving: None. Pick the car up tomorrow morning and save yourself the parking headache. Ferry to Miyajima is about 10 minutes from Miyajimaguchi.
Start at the Peace Memorial Park, and start early, before the school groups arrive. The A-Bomb Dome is the one building left standing near the hypocentre and it’s still there, skeletal, deliberately unrepaired. Give the Peace Memorial Museum two hours and go in knowing it will hit hard, because it does, and it should. Afterwards walk the park slowly, ring the Peace Bell, sit by the river for a bit. Then in the afternoon get out to Miyajima, where the great orange torii gate stands in the sea at high tide, because ending the day there is the emotional reset you’ll want.
Things to do:
- Peace Memorial Museum and the A-Bomb Dome (allow 2 to 3 hours, museum plus park)
- Children’s Peace Monument and the paper crane cases (20 minutes, don’t rush past)
- Ferry to Miyajima from Miyajimaguchi, about 40 minutes from central Hiroshima by tram or train (half a day)
- Itsukushima Shrine and the floating torii, ideally around high tide (1 to 2 hours on the island)
- Book a guided Hiroshima and Miyajima day tour if you’d rather have someone carry the context for you
Take a breath: Don't schedule anything demanding for the hour after the museum. I've watched people walk out and just need to sit down somewhere quiet with a coffee. Build that gap in on purpose rather than fighting it.
Where to Stay in Hiroshima
Day 2: Hiroshima → Iwakuni → Shimonoseki → Mojiko
Driving: Iwakuni is about 45 km from Hiroshima (roughly 50 minutes). Shimonoseki is another 175 km on (about 2 hours). Mojiko is a final 10 km through the tunnel (15 minutes). Call it 230 km with stops.
Pick the car up and head south-west. Iwakuni comes up quickly and it’s worth the stop for Kintaikyo, a five-arched wooden bridge that curves over the river like something drawn rather than built. Then it’s a long, easy run along the coast to Shimonoseki at the very tip of Honshu, where Japan narrows to a point and the Kanmon Straits churn below. Have lunch at Karato Market if you land there before early afternoon, because the fugu counters are the whole reason people come. Then you drive under the sea. The Kanmon Tunnel takes about four minutes and dumps you into Kyushu, and the old port district of Mojiko on the far side is all red brick and 1920s harbour buildings.
Things to do:
- Kintaikyo Bridge in Iwakuni, plus the ropeway up to the castle if you’ve time (1 to 1.5 hours)
- Karato Market in Shimonoseki for a seafood lunch, busiest and best at weekends (1 hour)
- Kanmon Straits viewpoint at Mekari Park on the Kyushu side (30 minutes)
- Walk the Mojiko Retro harbour district before dinner (1 to 2 hours)
- Consider the pedestrian tunnel under the straits if you fancy walking between two islands (45 minutes return)
Fuel stop: Japanese expressway service areas are a genuine highlight rather than a chore. Proper regional food, clean everything, and often a local speciality counter. The ones along this stretch do very good soft serve, and I'm not being flippant about that.
Recommended read: Lost in Translation: Navigating Japan as a First-Timer
Where to Stay in Mojiko
Day 3: Mojiko → Dazaifu → Fukuoka
Driving: Dazaifu is about 70 km from Mojiko (roughly 1 hour). Fukuoka is a further 20 km (about 30 minutes). Short day, deliberately.
An easy morning. Drive inland to Dazaifu, where Tenmangu Shrine sits under enormous camphor trees and thousands of students turn up every year to pray for exam luck. The approach street is lined with shops selling umegae mochi, a grilled rice cake with red bean inside, cooked fresh in front of you. Eat one hot. Then it’s a short run into Fukuoka, where you park the car for the night and switch to walking, because Fukuoka is a city best explored on foot with an appetite. This is the ramen capital of the country and the evening yatai stalls along the river are the thing everyone remembers.
Things to do:
- Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine and the wooded grounds behind it (1.5 hours)
- Kyushu National Museum, a short walk or escalator ride from the shrine (1.5 hours if museums are your thing)
- Ohori Park and the Fukuoka Castle ruins for an afternoon wander (1 hour)
- Yatai food stalls at Nakasu after dark, arrive around 7pm (2 hours, easily)
- Browse evening food tours around Fukuoka if you’d rather someone did the ordering
Local wisdom: At the yatai stalls, order a bowl and a drink rather than sitting nursing one thing. Seats are limited and turnover keeps the whole system working. Nobody will say anything if you linger, but the unspoken rule is eat, chat, move on so the next lot can squeeze in.
Recommended reads: All Guides to Japan
Where to Stay in Fukuoka
Day 4: Fukuoka → Karatsu → Arita → Ureshino
Driving: Karatsu is about 60 km from Fukuoka (roughly 1 hour). Arita is another 45 km (about 50 minutes). Ureshino is a final 30 km (30 minutes). Around 135 km in total.
My favourite driving day of the trip. Head west along the Genkai coast to Karatsu, a low-key castle town with a black pine forest, Niji no Matsubara, that runs for kilometres along the beach. Drive through it with the windows down. Then cut inland to Arita, which has been making porcelain since the early 1600s, when kaolin clay was found nearby and the whole industry was born. The kiln shops here are quiet and the workshops will happily let you watch. Finish at Ureshino, a hot spring town famous for silky alkaline water and green tea, and stay in a ryokan if the budget allows.
Things to do:
- Karatsu Castle and the pine forest coast road (1.5 hours)
- Arita’s Uchiyama historic district and the porcelain shops (2 hours)
- Tozan Shrine in Arita, with its porcelain torii gate, which is exactly as unusual as it sounds (30 minutes)
- Ureshino onsen soak, either in your ryokan or a public bath (1 to 2 hours)
- Try Ureshino green tea at a tea house before dinner (30 minutes)
Slow down here: Arita rewards being unhurried. Most visitors treat it as a shop and leave inside 40 minutes, which is a shame, because the good stuff is on the back lanes where old kiln walls are built from stacked firing bricks. Park once, walk everywhere, buy something you'll have to wrap carefully.
Recommended reads: All Guides to Asia
Day 5: Ureshino → Nagasaki (finish line)
Driving: Nagasaki is about 90 km from Ureshino (roughly 1 hour 20 on the expressway). Drop the car at the city or airport depot when you arrive.
Last drive, and a short one, which means you arrive with the whole day ahead of you. Nagasaki is built into a steep bowl around its harbour and it’s an odd, layered, quietly beautiful city. It spent centuries as Japan’s only window on the outside world, so you get Chinese temples, Portuguese-influenced sponge cake, a Dutch trading post and hidden Christian history all stacked on top of each other. Then there’s the Peace Park and the Atomic Bomb Museum in the north of the city, and if you’ve come from Hiroshima it lands differently, quieter somehow. Finish with the Mount Inasa ropeway after dark. The night view is the reason people rank this city so highly.
📍 Things to do:
- Nagasaki Peace Park, the hypocentre marker and the Atomic Bomb Museum (2.5 hours)
- Dejima, the reconstructed Dutch trading island (1 to 1.5 hours)
- Glover Garden and Oura Church on the harbour slopes (1.5 hours)
- Mount Inasa ropeway for the night panorama, go about 30 minutes before sunset (1.5 hours)
- Walk Shinchi Chinatown for dinner and a wander (1 hour)
Good to know: Central Nagasaki is a nightmare to drive around, all one-way slopes and tram lines down the middle of the road. Drop the car as soon as you arrive and use the trams, which are cheap, frequent and cover almost everything on this list.
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Where To Stay For This Japan Road Trip
You get a different bed almost every night on this one, which sounds tiring but actually keeps the trip moving nicely. Aim central wherever you can, because you’ll want to walk out for dinner rather than drive. Here’s how I’d break the nights up.
Hiroshima (night 1): Stay near Peace Park or the Hondori shopping arcade so you can walk to the museum first thing and get ahead of the crowds. The area around Hiroshima Station is cheaper and perfectly fine, just less atmospheric in the evenings.
Mojiko or Kokura (night 2): Mojiko for charm, with the old harbour buildings lit up at night and a couple of lovely converted hotels. Kokura for practicality and a wider choice, ten minutes down the road.
Fukuoka (night 3): Hakata for transport links and easy parking, or Tenjin if you want shops, bars and the yatai stalls on your doorstep. Tenjin is the more fun of the two by a decent margin.
Ureshino (night 4): A ryokan with its own onsen, if you only splash out once on this trip make it here. Tatami rooms, a multi-course dinner, and a soak before bed. Nearby Takeo is a good alternative with a famous library and hot springs of its own.
Nagasaki (your finish, night 5): Around Dejima or the Nakadori area, close to the harbour and the tram lines. Higher up the slopes gets you harbour views and a proper climb home after dinner, which is a trade worth thinking about.
Pit Stops & Side Detours
The main route already links up cleanly, but there are a few add-ons if you’ve got a spare half-day or want to stretch this to six. Keep them short so they don’t ruin a driving day.
- Akiyoshido Cave near Shimonoseki, a huge limestone cavern with a karst plateau above it, adds about 90 minutes plus the detour
- Imari, next door to Arita, for the old kiln village at Okawachiyama tucked into a narrow valley
- Yanagawa south of Fukuoka, where you can take a punt along the old canals and eat grilled eel
- Shimabara Peninsula east of Nagasaki, for Unzen’s volcanic steam vents and a castle town with carp swimming in the street channels
- Hirado on the far west coast, an old trading port with a bridge, a castle and almost no other visitors
- Skip: Huis Ten Bosch, the Dutch theme park outside Nagasaki. It’s well done for what it is, but you’ve just driven past four hundred years of real Japanese history and this is a replica of Holland
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Browse the shopLocal Eats Worth Chasing
This corner of Japan eats extremely well and it’s cheaper than Tokyo or Kyoto. Every city on the route has one dish it takes seriously, so go hungry and order the local thing rather than the safe thing. My travel tips section has more on eating well without overspending.
- Hiroshima okonomiyaki, layered with noodles and cooked on a hotplate in front of you. Different from the Osaka version and locals will tell you so, at length
- Oysters in Hiroshima, grilled in the shell along the Miyajima approach street. Best from late autumn through winter
- Fugu in Shimonoseki, the pufferfish the town is built on. Prepared by licensed chefs only, and much milder in flavour than the drama suggests
- Yaki curry in Mojiko, a baked curry rice with cheese and an egg on top. Strange, comforting, oddly brilliant
- Hakata tonkotsu ramen in Fukuoka, thin noodles in cloudy pork broth. Order a kaedama, the extra noodle refill, or you’ll regret it
- Motsunabe in Fukuoka if you fancy something heartier, an offal hotpot with cabbage and garlic chives
- Ureshino tea and yudofu, tofu simmered in hot spring water until it goes silky
- Nagasaki champon, a thick noodle soup with seafood and pork, plus castella sponge cake for afters, which arrived with Portuguese traders and never left
Road Trip Playlist
Podcasts to Queue Up
The driving days are short but the expressway stretches between Shimonoseki and Fukuoka are the kind where your brain wanders. A few good listens make them disappear.
- A long-form Japanese history series, ideally one that covers the Edo period and Nagasaki’s isolation years, because you’ll be standing in it on day five
- The Rest Is History, for episodes on the Pacific War if you want the context before Hiroshima rather than after
- Anything on Japanese food culture, which pairs annoyingly well with the fact you’re driving between ramen towns
- A basic Japanese phrase podcast for the first hour, enough to manage petrol stations and restaurant ordering
- An audiobook saved for the Iwakuni to Shimonoseki coast run, the longest single stretch of the trip
Quick win: Download the playlist. Use zero data, and you dont need to worry about signal!
Road Trip Essentials
Driving in Japan is far less daunting than people expect, but there are a handful of things you really do need to sort in advance. A couple of these I learned the irritating way.
An international driving permit, and no way around it. Japan will not accept your home licence on its own. UK drivers need the 1949 Geneva Convention permit, which you get from a post office before you leave, and it must be carried alongside your actual licence. Rental desks check. There is no fixing this once you’ve landed.
A hire car booked early. Automatics are standard here, which helps, but the small compacts go first in cherry blossom and autumn colour seasons. I’d lock in your car early and pick something compact rather than roomy, because rural lanes and multi-storey car parks in Japan are built for small vehicles.
An ETC card for the tolls. Japanese expressways are tolled and the fees add up across a route this long. Ask for an ETC card when you collect the car, and you sail through the electronic lanes rather than fumbling for cash at every barrier. Worth the small rental fee purely for the sanity.
Data that actually works. Google Maps is your lifeline here, and Japanese sat navs sometimes want a phone number rather than an address to find a destination. Grab an eSIM for Japan before you fly and it’s live the moment you land.
Travel insurance, because driving abroad invites plot twists. A scraped wing mirror in a narrow Arita lane, a cancelled connection, a stomach that disagrees with the fugu. I’d sort travel insurance before you go rather than assume it’ll all be fine.
Coins, and slip-on shoes. Car park machines still like cash, and you’ll be taking your shoes off at temples, ryokan and some restaurants. Laces will drive you mad by day three. For the rest of what I pack, have a nose through my travel planning resources, and if you’d rather not drive the airport legs, you can pre-book an airport transfer at either end.
Stay connected: If you'd rather have unlimited data than a fixed bundle, Holafly do a Japan eSIM and my code THETRAVELTINKER gets you 5% off any eSIM, or 10% off Holafly plans for the first 12 months. Handy on a trip where you're navigating unfamiliar junctions all week.
Watch out: Japan has a zero tolerance drink driving law, and it applies to passengers and to whoever served you as well. If you're staying at a ryokan with sake at dinner, that's a night the car stays where it is. No grey area, no morning-after maths.
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Helen Ross
I’m a 32-year-old photographer and travel enthusiast, journeying from place to place, immortalizing the hidden tales, unseen moments, and the narratives that lie between.
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