Located in the center of the main island of Honshu, Shiga is a landlocked prefecture surrounding the renowned Biwako lake. Due to its strategic position at the intersection of traffic from Kyoto/Osaka to its immediate west, and traffic coming from the East and Tokyo, during the middle ages the area was the stage of incessant […]
Okayama Prefecture, along the coast from Yamaguchi to the Kansai area is developing technology to help landlocked towns and villages get connected to the transportation network. One of the most recent examples dates back to 2016, when Toyota’s Mobility Foundation decided to hand $1.1m in funding to two local NPOs to explore transportation via microEVs […]
Awaji City, population 45,000, is one of the main connecting points between the picturesque and vibrant town of Kobe with Shikoku, one of the four main islands comprising Japan. And while the flow of traffic continues unabated, especially with the fast bus services, many of these don’t stop in Awaji City making it difficult for […]
In a surprising article this morning in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, the UK bus system seems to be suffering from some of the same symptoms as the Japanese rural transportation system. With bus numbers down 6% nationally over the course of just the last 12 months, local funding being cut, and at the same time […]
My memories of Nagasaki remain set in the fog and pouring rain of a dark December weekend back in 2000. Especially dark as I drove most of the day up from Miyazaki Prefecture where I was living to visit a friend in hospital there. I remember spending a long time driving around trying to find […]
Just over 100km to the Northwest of Tokyo is the picturesque and mountainous area of Gunma, where many visitors enjoy the hundreds of famous hot springs in the area (from Kusatsu to Shibukawa and many more). And while other regions tend to focus only on one type of mobility experimentation, the local university has developed […]
The prefecture of Iwate is just north of Miyagi prefecture where I was three weeks ago in Ishinomaki City surveying mobility options after the 2011 disaster. Iwate was badly hit by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, especially Otsuchi City, where half the town and the entire fishing industry was washed away overnight. In […]
In my very first trip to Japan back in the mid 1990s, I decided to travel up from Tokyo to the northernmost island of Hokkaido to visit the Shiretoko Peninsula, a natural wildlife reserve where whale watching and hiking are popular in the summer months. I bought a cheaper version of the Japan Rail Pass […]
Nestled in the mountains at equal distance between the northern cities of Akita and Morioka, Akita Prefecture’s Tozawa Lake is an unlikely place for fully automated driving. But it is now the Japanese government’s first designated location for open-road fully automated driving tests. During the first tests back in November 2016, the test vehicle travelled […]
If you’ve travelled to Japan before, whether to visit Kyoto and Western Japan or to head out to Toyota City on business, the Shinkansen bullet train will inevitably take you through the city of Nagoya the capital of Aichi Prefecture. And while it is well known for Nagoya Castle and its broad-based automotive industry, Aichi […]