[tstorey]

Advice please:

We are an Australian family of 4 travelling Osaka - Kyoto - Takayama - Hakone - Tokyo over 14 days in January.

I've been looking into train and bus fares for the Kyoto - Takayama - Hakone legs of our journey and I'm starting to think we should just hire a car to do these long journeys given we have to pay 4 fares. I also looked into bus which is definitely a lot cheaper but also takes a lot longer and I'm worried about our children not doing well on the bus.

What do you think about hiring a car to self-drive Kyoto to Takayama (2 nights stay in Tak) and then drive Takayama to Hakone (drop off car in Hakone)?

I have found a company that will hire us a medium sized car for a ver good price, (ToCoo), ( a lot lower than combined train fares), even including the fee for dropping the car off in Hakone.

We have driven in Thailand, the UK and Malaysia before but I'm not sure how the experience in Japan would compare. Would traffic congestion on the highways be a problem? I know there are tolls too, how much should I roughly allow for the cost of these? Also how much would you allow for fuel costs to do this drive?

I'm also not sure what the road from Nagoya to Takayama would be like. Does it ever close due to snow? If so, how often does this happen? If it happens, does the train still operate?

Any advice and info you can offer is greatly appreciated,

many thanks :-)