There's not a lot of material out there discussing hitchhiking in Japan, so as now a seasoned veteran, I'd like to compile a resource for other young people with wanderlust but no money. I was traveling with one friend who had extensive experience at hitchhiking across Europe, but I had none, and to all of us, hitchhiking JAPAN of all places was a completely unknown equation.
The short of it: it can be amazing. The drivers who took us were always a little surprised or uneasy at first, but 90% of them were incredibly warm and welcoming, and wanted to hear our stories. It didn't happen to us, but I've heard of hitchhikers whose drivers insist they come over for dinner or stay in their house. Still, we received candy from some and ample tips about local sights and events from many.
What to bring:
Probably not too different from what you would bring on any hitchhiking or camping trip. Pack light and pack for uncertainties. The advantage of urban traveling in Japan is that anything you might possibly forget to pack will be easy to find on the road. The 100 Yen Lawson, Daiso, and Conbinis are your friends. Its also easy to shower and freshen up on the way by making a quick stop at Sento, Onsen, or 24 hr comic cafe (most stores have a shower room).
Where to sleep:
Hostels are of course a great way to travel because you get to met other people on the way, but often require a little more advance planning than we had. (Plus, good luck trying to find open rooms ANYWHERE during Golden Week without reserving half a year in advance.) We also looked at couchsurfing, sending requests that we didn't really know where we'd be on which days, but if somebody offered us a place to crash we'd re-route to get there. Maybe this would work with a little more advance-planning, but for the small amount of time we had to prep for the trip, we didn't make any successful contacts.
The most liberating option is to urban camp - carrying a tent and sleeping bags and finding a park in whatever city you happen to be in. As far as I can tell, there's not a legal restriction on this? Signs in parks have extensive lists of banned (or at least worthy of shunning) behaviors, but not one of them mentioned camping. We found woody and partially hidden places in parks, or little nooks alongside rivers, and spent the night quite comfortably. Even in places that would get a lot of pedestrian traffic (dog-walkers and the elderly strolling in the morning) nobody bothered our tent.
We did get kicked out of Ohori park in Fukuoka, but that was also the only gated park we stayed at, and we were next to a museum, which might explain it. The security guard, though, was unbelievably nice about it. He woke us up at 6 am, but mentioned he had found our tent last night but decided to let us sleep until morning before getting rid of us. Thank you, nice security guard man.
Sleeping in an urban park is a stretch beyond my usual comfort zone - two of the parks we slept not far removed from homeless people and their cardboard/tarp constructions. I absolutely would not have done this by myself, but because I was in a group (and too exhausted to look for anything else by the time we got to the park around midnight after traveling all day) I went along with it. Japan tends to be a very safe place, but as always, be aware of your surroundings.
Where to eat:
It is very hard to find anywhere in Japan where you can't walk 500 meters to a conbini. This is good for convenience, but also bad because it makes it incredibly easy to get lulled into a false sense of security, knowing you'll never be far removed from an easy food source. Just make sure to carry enough stores of food and water for you that you won't panic if you end up stranded somewhere for the night between rides. (This happened to me when a mis-communication with the driver set us down in the middle of nowhere, Yamaguchi, and I was hungry from traveling all day. This was the moment where I believed most sincerely I would not make it back.)
How to flag down cars:
Most Japanese people will be familiar with the English word "hitch-hike" but few have done it or given a lift themselves. Thus, beyond the normal challenge of asking a stranger to do you a favor, you also have to communicate what you're doing so as to get over the familiarity barrier.
First method: Just holding out your thumb works, but it was incredibly ineffective. The biggest challenge is finding where to position yourself. You can't start from the middle of a city, so it may take a few stops on a local train to get out far enough to an area with slower traffic merging onto a highway. From there, you set up a position where you know most/all the passing traffic goes onto the highway you want, and that the car has enough room to stop or pull over comfortably. Japanese drivers will not break traffic rules to pull over and pick you up.
With this, we always had a sign in big fat marker (obtained from the 100 yen Lawson!) saying where we wanted to go. We experimented with a number of signs, but the format that eventually worked was always 「（地名）方面」, or "in the direction of (place)". Large-scale destinations and more general signs ("the direction of Kyushu", "anywhere to the west") didn't seem to work. Most people won't be eager to pick up a hitch-hiker out of the blue, but getting the first moment of mental recognition when they see they're going to the same place as us seemed to help.
The second method, which worked much better for us, is approaching people in person. You need to first get to some sort of midway point away from a city (rest stops along the highway are usually spaced out every 50 km, or big parking lots at outlet malls). The first step getting that far usually requires the first method of thumb-and-sign.
From there, we approached people coming back from their shopping / resting. I explained directly--"We're hitchhiking with the end goal of Kyushu, right now we're trying to get in the direction of XX, it's so terribly of me to ask this but maybe if you're going in the same direction..." We were refused any number of times, but always got a ride much faster (and much longer distances) using this direct approach.
The trade-off, is that its incredibly gutsy and awkward to stop someone and ask for a big favor. But, with each car we managed to nab, we asked the driver how we might do this with a minimum of making people feel uncomfortable. Here's some of what we gleaned.
How to not terrify the poor people you ask for rides:
~Communication. This came up the most: people admitted they were uneasy at first, thinking "oh no am I going to have to speak English to this foreigner I studied it but I'm not very good at speaking English aaaahhh" but when they figured out I spoke enough Japanese to communicate comfortably, they relaxed. Also the way you ask for a ride is critical. In Japanese in general, going right into asking a favor is rude even with people you know. Using the indirect and unobtrusive speaking patterns of asking a favor goes a long way to not spooking people you've approached. The script I used...
すみません、ちょっとよろしいでしょうか。あのう、私たちは今、ヒッチハイク中、（地名）へ行きたいんですが、もしかして同じ方面へ行かれるなら。。。
Doing this, I make it clear what I'm going to ask, and they almost always gave me a response before I could even ask the favor. In the rare case where I actually completed the question, I did it as gingerly as possible.
あのう、ご面倒なお願いで申し訳ありませんが、（地名）まで乗せていただけないでしょうか。
Being able to explain the situation in Japanese was key, and I think having some grasp of keigo and very soft patterns helped immensely. Honestly I doubt how far we might have gotten without a Japanese background.
~Props to quickly convey what's going on. When we approached people cold, they sometimes thought we were conducting a poll, or just up to no good. Several people suggested that carrying around a backpack and the sign with us would clearly situate us as travelers looking for a ride, and hopefully ease the first moment of surprise as we approach.
~being not Japanese. As much as I feel patronized by some of the special treatment foreigners tend to receive ("you can read kanji? you can use chopsticks?! you're so good at that!) hitchhiking is one very useful application of foreigner privilege, or as I like to call it, GAIJIN SMASH. Several drivers mentioned if they saw Japanese people hitchhiking, they would assume the hitchhikers are strange or delinquents or something else suspicious, but seeing foreigners trying to hitchhike, they think "oh, of course, that's something that foreigners do".
My group looked about as foreign as possible - between a blonde American, a blonde Pole, and an Egyption with a bright-red 'fro, it was very clear right away we were not Japanese. I hear from many of my friends of Asian-background living/working in Japan that they don't get the foreigner treatment in the same way I do. I don't know for sure, but wonder if being visibly Asian might then work against you as a potentially hitchhiker, regardless of whether you're a native Japanese or not.
~be two people. Most people said they'd also be more comfortable with a small group than a single person. I expected that traveling in a group of 3 would make it more difficult considering the small size of most Japanese cars; somehow we made it work, but I think 3 is probably the maximum size of a feasible group.
Anyway, that concludes my pro-tip compendium for now. I'd really like to make this a resource for future hitchhikers in Japan, so if you have anything to add, please let me know!
