Reddit mentions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Japan

I'm trying to remember where I read that...It may have been here, but I don't have it on me and when I look online I can't find anything. I know when I went there we were told not to walk past the stated limit, and that things sometimes didn't work out so well for people that ignored the advice.

That's a very appropriate username, by the way.

Edit: now I'm wondering if I just imagined the hiker fatalities...I could have sworn i heard it more than once. looking into it, it turns out volcanic gases are a real "thing". With most volcanos it probably wouldn't be a big deal, but sakurajima erupts with ash hundreds of times a year. So I guess on any given day it could happen, and if you were close enough when it came you really could get a bad lungful and mess yourself up.

Ah, wish I'd seen this earlier. I've hitchhiked almost the entire country at this point. I had a working holiday visa last year and didn't bother working, instead just hitchhiked around.

I guess you already have tickets to Tokyo, but my number one advice would be to get the hell away from Tokyo. I'm actually surprised to here the other guy had an easyish time hitching around the Tokyo area because from what I've heard it sounds unreasonably difficult. I've personally never bothered because I just plain don't like that area much.

So yeah, number one tip is get out of that area, then everything becomes a million times easier. Hokkaido is a hitchhiker's paradise, but it's a bit far depending on how long you're here for. You can find flights up to there for about a hundred bucks, which isn't too bad. Or again, if you've got a decent amount of time, just hitchhike up towards Aomori and take the ferry.

Recently over Golden Week I hitchhiked from Aomori Prefecture, the northernmost prefecture on Honshuu, the main island, to Kanazawa in Ishikawa prefecture, which is about 850km away I would say. That was a really pretty route. I liked it a lot.

You mention the expressway, and I'm curious as to what you mean. Like, paid expressways? If that's the case, just know that getting on those in the first place is actually pretty difficult. I've done it a couple times, but only once was I able to actually hitchhike from in front of an interchange and onto the expressway. Hitchhiking on the expressway or too close to the on ramp to the expressway is illegal. Once on an expressway, hitchhiking from parking/service area to service area is very easy and fast, but is a very lousy way to see the country. The sound barriers completely remove the very beautiful scenery from the equation. That being said, on my way back from Ishikawa Prefecture during Golden Week, I covered about 1000km in one day coming back home to catch work the next day (there was a detour into Tohoku region, so 850km became closer to 1000km). But again, you see literally nothing and it's too fast to actually be interesting at all. I much more recommend taking the national highways because they're beautiful, often running by the sea, and people are a lot more willing to stop there than in front of a on-ramp (though I guess once you're already in a PA/SA, it's about even).

As for maps, use Google Maps. It doesn't get any better than that. As soon as you get here, go to a huge tech store like Yodobashi Camera and pick yourself up a prepaid sim for your phone (obviously phone has to be unlocked) and use maps. Alternatively you can get one of those portable wi-fi things but I never did because there's no such thing as a cheap one as far as I've seen.

If you have quite a bit of time to mentally prepare before the trip itself, I highly recommend reading Hitching Rides with the Buddha for stories:
http://www.amazon.com/Hitching-Rides-Buddha-Will-Ferguson/dp/1841957852/
And his practical how-to book Hitchhiker's Guide to Japan:
http://www.amazon.com/Hitchhikers-Guide-Japan-Will-Ferguson/dp/0804820686/
The guide is incredibly outdated in terms of destination information (worst was getting to an area with an amazing sounding hot water waterfall that led to a free open air mixed gender onsen, only to find a landslide closed the whole thing down like 8 years ago) but the route information is solid, granted it is more focused on Hokkaido, Tohoku region, Kyushu and Shikoku, with almost no focus on central Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, northern Kanto, etc.)

If you have any other questions about hitchhiking here in Japan let me know. I'm not an expert, but I do know a shit tons after a year of doing it.