Solivagant (n.)
One who wanders alone. In other words, the sort of person who would rather disappear into Japan by themselves than negotiate an itinerary with five other travel companions.
Especially these days, I spend almost all of my time traveling in Japan alone. Since the advent of AI, I’m constantly working with Claude and other tools while on the go, producing work as both a fractional CMO and a one-man Condé Nast. Alas, that type of ship-while-traveling workload does not mesh well with trying to juggle trips with friends. What’s more, as someone who is basically an anti-foodie and would prefer fasting until dinner, group trips just aren’t my shtick. So, most of my adventures across the lovely country that is Japan are done entirely solo.
Given my propensity to spend time alone, it’s only logical that I have accumulated a lot of thoughts and experiences about solo travel in Japan over the decade or so I’ve spent exploring the remote reaches of this amazing country. At this point, I think I’ve earned the right to call myself something of an expert on going it alone here. I’ve spent years navigating the country, figuring out what works, what becomes more annoying without a companion, and where traveling solo is actually the better option. So, if you’re considering a trip to Japan by yourself, I have a thing or two to share.
On that note, what follows is everything I’ve learned about making the most of the experience without having anyone else along for the ride during my journeys to document a different side of Japan. Drawing from all of that time on the road alone, I’ll cover everything from getting around and choosing where to stay to eating by yourself, staying safe, and figuring out which experiences are actually better without company. I won’t suggest everyone ditch their friends and become a solivagant like me. Japan is quite possibly the best place to explore as a solo traveler, though, so if you’ve ever wanted to try going it alone, this is one country where doing so makes a hell of a lot of sense.
Solo Travel Japan & Why I Love It
For me, the biggest advantage of traveling solo in Japan is simply having complete governance over my own trip (especially when chasing content for this blog). Put simply, I don’t need to worry about whether someone else hates walking, wants to sleep in, would rather go somewhere else, or has had enough of whatever I’m doing that day. There is no committee meeting every morning about the upcoming itinerary. If I want to spend all afternoon somewhere, take some ridiculous detour, or suddenly change plans entirely, I can. The only person I need to keep happy is myself.
The same freedom applies to the pace of the trip. When you’re traveling with other people, somebody is almost always waiting for somebody else. Maybe they’re done with an attraction before you are, or perhaps you’re ready to move on while they’re still looking around. None of that is inherently bad, but over several days, you inevitably start adjusting what you do around everyone else’s preferences. Traveling alone removes that calculation entirely. I can walk as far as I want, linger as long as I want, and leave whenever I’m ready, all while listening to a podcast or shipping work with AI.
Not worrying about where to eat is another big one for me because, as I mentioned above, I’m about as far from a foodie as it gets. I’m perfectly happy skipping breakfast and lunch and eating properly once I’m done exploring for the day. That obviously doesn’t work nearly as well when traveling with people who want three meals, coffee breaks, snacks, or a particular famous restaurant at a particular time. Alone, eating never needs to dictate my schedule. If I would rather keep moving for another four hours before thinking about dinner, nobody else is getting hungry because of it.
Onsen might very well be the best example of all. When I’m with friends, especially of the other gender, part of me is eventually wondering whether everyone else has already finished bathing and is sitting outside waiting for me. Alone, I don’t have to care. If I want to spend hours cycling between hot and cold baths, sitting outside, soaking again, and generally losing track of time, I can do exactly that. Nobody is waiting in the lobby wondering where the hell I am. And really, that is what I love most about solo travel in Japan: I get to give everything exactly as much time as I think it deserves.
A lot of people ask me whether I get lonely exploring Japan by myself, but as something of a solivagant, I honestly don’t experience it that way. Especially these days, I have AI, podcasts, and a never-ending pile of work as a fractional CMO to keep me occupied whenever I’m on the move. If anything, I vastly prefer being alone because it lets me travel, work, and do whatever I need to do without having somebody quietly sitting beside me wishing I’d engage with them. For the way I travel now, solitude is not really a downside at all. It’s part of what makes the whole thing work.
Your First Solo Trip to Japan
I’ll be honest, doing your first solo trip to Japan might seem a little daunting at first. You’re flying halfway around the world to a country where you probably don’t speak the language, not everyone will speak English, the train network looks like someone spilled spaghetti across a map, and there is nobody beside you to help figure things out when something inevitably goes sideways. In reality, though, Japan is quite possibly one of the easiest countries in the world for traveling alone. If you’re a fellow solivagant who genuinely enjoys spending most of your time outside the company of other people, it is damn near perfect.
A little preparation also goes a long way toward removing whatever anxiety you might have before arriving. Make sure you have reliable mobile data (or know how to use Japan’s free Wi-Fi), Google Maps, Google Translate or another translation tool, working credit cards, some way to get cash, and at least a basic idea of your airport transfer. When you’re traveling solo, your phone effectively becomes your navigator, translator, timetable, and backup brain all at once. Once those fundamentals are working, language barriers and most of the other scary stuff about being alone in Japan become considerably less scary.
Likewise, don’t make your first day harder than it needs to be. After a long international flight, this is not the time to prove how hardcore you are by landing in Tokyo and immediately trying to cram in twelve hours of sightseeing. Plan ahead enough to know how you’re getting to your hotel, get yourself checked in, figure out the immediate neighborhood, eat something if you’re hungry, and get some sleep. When you’re on your own, there is nobody else around to take over when jet lag turns your brain into mush, so give yourself a little room to settle in before charging headfirst into the trip.
From there, prepare enough to function independently but resist the urge to plan every waking minute. Know where you’re sleeping, have a rough idea of what you want to see, and understand how you’re moving between major destinations. Beyond that, leave yourself room to improvise. If somewhere turns out to be awesome, stay longer. If an attraction sucks, leave. If you suddenly decide you’d rather spend the afternoon wandering some random neighborhood instead of following the itinerary you made three months ago, go do that. Nobody else’s vacation gets screwed up because you changed your mind.
One of the other great things about traveling Japan alone is that meeting people can actually be easier. Plenty of tourists spend their entire trip inside their own group and barely interact with Japanese people outside of service encounters. By yourself, you can strike up a conversation, get introduced to someone’s friends, and simply fold into whatever is happening. Of course, following a bunch of strangers into the Tokyo night still requires some common sense. Japan is incredibly safe, but incredibly safe is not the same thing as idiot-proof.
Safety Tips for a Safe Country
One night in Amemura, I got talking with a local while out drinking. Before long, she’d introduced me to a handful of her friends, and then somehow, a few minutes later, I was climbing into the back of one of their vans on the way to an underground psychedelic rave in Sakai. I had met these people maybe an hour earlier, yet there I was disappearing into the Osaka night with a group of complete strangers. For all I knew, this was how I finally got kidnapped and had my kidneys harvested. Somehow, some variation of this keeps happening whenever I go out alone in Osaka.
For my money, Japan is the safest country on earth, and experiences like the one above are part of why I feel comfortable being so spontaneous here. That said, there is a big difference between feeling safe and completely letting your guard down. This is especially true at night when alcohol enters the equation and your judgment inevitably gets a little worse. I am hardly one to preach after admitting that I willingly climb into vans with strangers, but keep track of your belongings, watch your drinks, and retain enough common sense to get yourself home.
Not to be Captain Obvious here, but you should be particularly careful in major nightlife districts where tourists are an obvious target. Kabukicho and similar areas have long had touts trying to pull people into bars and clubs, and my advice here has not changed much over the years: just don’t follow them. Likewise, don’t assume that Japan’s reputation for safety means you can stop paying attention to your wallet, phone, or whatever else you’re carrying. You can absolutely enjoy a late-night outing alone here without spending the entire evening looking over your shoulder, but keep your wits about you.
Additionally, as a solo traveler in Japan, there are a few other boring precautions worth remembering when nobody else is around to bail you out. Carry your passport as required, keep some way of paying separate from your main wallet, and try not to let your phone hover perpetually at two percent battery. Also, Japan is not the place to get creative with illegal drugs or drunken fights. I’m not here to give you a lecture on how to live your life, but Japanese law is decidedly unforgiving in these areas. There are much better ways to add some excitement to a solo trip.
Finally, don’t be a dummy when it comes to Mother Nature. Japan may be ridiculously safe when other human beings are the concern, but earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis, landslides, and the occasional angry piece of wildlife operate under entirely different rules. Pay attention to warnings, check conditions before heading into the mountains, and remember that 110 gets the police while 119 gets the fire department and ambulance. I’m not here to tell you to spend your vacation worrying about disaster scenarios. Just respect the fact that some of the biggest risks in Japan have absolutely nothing to do with crime.
Getting Around on Your Own
One of the things I love most about traveling solo in Japan is how much easier public transport becomes when you only need to worry about yourself. When you’re with someone else, suddenly you need two or more seats together on trains that may already be packed, and somebody inevitably cares who gets the window. Alone, I can grab whatever seat is available or just get up at some ungodly hour and take a 6:00 AM Shinkansen before most sane people are awake. I also never have to negotiate for the window seat, which suits me perfectly since I work the whole ride and that is where the power socket happens to be.
More broadly, Japan’s transportation network is one of the main reasons the country works so damn well for solo travel. In the major cities, getting around is almost laughably easy once you have mobile data and know how to use the services that calculate connections for you. You don’t need somebody driving, navigating, or helping decipher the system while you stare helplessly at a station map in somewhere like Tokyo Station. Plug in where you want to go, follow the route, and get on the train. Even when I am exploring somewhere far outside the usual tourist circuit, I still have pretty ironclad faith that public transportation can get me surprisingly close to where I need to be.
That said, traveling through the countryside requires a little more attention. Missing a train in Tokyo might mean standing around for five minutes. Missing one in rural Japan can mean waiting an hour, completely screwing up a connection, or discovering that the bus you needed was the last one of the day, with nobody else around to help you figure out Plan B. Whenever I am heading somewhere remote, I pay close attention not only to when my transportation leaves but also to how long it takes me to get back to the station or bus stop. Rural Japan is not especially difficult to navigate. It is just considerably less forgiving if you don’t bother looking at the damn timetable.
For trains, I still like using Jorudan when I want to compare connections and work out the finer details of a route, while Google Maps is often more useful once buses and walking directions enter the equation. I also tend to screenshot the departure I am aiming for along with the next train after it. That way, if I am enjoying somewhere and considering staying another 20 minutes, I can immediately see whether that decision costs me half an hour or strands me for two hours. Likewise, keep some cash on you because the wonderful world of IC cards eventually ends once you wander far enough into the countryside.
Finally, leave yourself some breathing room. Japan’s trains and buses may be remarkably good at running according to schedule, but that does not mean you will. Maybe an attraction takes longer than expected, you decide to walk somewhere you hadn’t planned on visiting, or you simply don’t feel like rushing back to catch the exact train you originally chose. Know when the last realistic departure is and what your next option looks like if you miss the one you wanted. One of the great advantages of traveling solo is being able to change plans whenever the hell you feel like it, so don’t build an itinerary that takes that freedom away.
Where to Stay Traveling Solo
When I am traveling solo in Japan, I care far more about where a hotel is located than whether the property itself is particularly memorable. If I am going to be on my own, I want to stay somewhere central where I can walk out the door at night, find something to eat, grab a drink, wander around for a while, or easily get moving again first thing the next morning. There is nothing inherently wrong with staying somewhere secluded, of course. I just find that isolation gets old a lot faster when there is nobody else in the room to enjoy it with.
Awara Onsen in Fukui Prefecture is a good example of what I mean. There are plenty of nice ryokan there, and I would happily recommend the area to people who specifically want that traditional experience. As a solo traveler, though, I would probably get bored out of my f@$#ing mind after the baths and dinner were finished. A ryokan stay is often built around relaxing with whoever you came with, eating at a set time, soaking in the onsen, and then hanging around together afterward. When there is no “together,” you can quickly find yourself sitting alone in a tatami room at 9:00 PM wondering what exactly you are supposed to do next.
For the way I travel, I would much rather stay somewhere like the Dormy Inn near Fukui Station. I still get an onsen to soak in when I am finished for the day, but I am also in the middle of the city with restaurants, bars, and other options nearby if I don’t feel like calling it a night. More importantly, I am already positioned near the transportation hub when morning comes. If I want to catch some absurdly early train or bus and get moving before everyone else wakes up, there is nothing stopping me from doing exactly that.
This is generally how I would think about choosing accommodation for a solo trip. You don’t necessarily need the fanciest hotel, the biggest room, or some picturesque property buried deep in the countryside. What you want is access. Look at how far the hotel is from the station, what is around it after dark, whether you can easily find food, and how annoying it will be to leave the following morning. You are going to spend most of your waking hours out exploring anyway, so paying extra for somewhere remote just so you can sit alone in a nicer room makes very little sense.
Of course, there are times when the accommodation itself is the point, and a great ryokan can absolutely be worth building a night around. Most of the time, though, I would rather have a compact room in the middle of civilization and the freedom to keep wandering until I decide I am done. Better still, traveling solo means that same freedom carries straight into the next morning. I don’t need to wait for somebody else to eat breakfast, shower, do their makeup, pack their stuff, or otherwise finally become capable of leaving the hotel. If I want to be on a 6:00 AM train, I can simply wake up, walk out the door, and go.
On Eating Alone in Japan
One of the benefits of solo travel is that you don’t need to stop for lunch. I mean, who the hell wants to put an hour on the clock to eat at the exact time when the sun is up and there are things to be seen? As someone who is basically an OMAD kind of guy, I would much rather fast through the day when traveling and have one big dinner once I am done exploring. Hell, if there are no good options for a protein-rich dinner around, I am perfectly okay making do with a couple of hard-boiled eggs, some grilled chicken, nuts, or whatever other depressing mixture of macronutrients the nearest convenience store can provide.
Thankfully, if your relationship with food is slightly more sophisticated than mine and Japanese cuisine is part of why you came, Japan is about as good as it gets for eating alone. Unlike in North America, where sitting by yourself in a proper restaurant can still feel vaguely sad or socially unusual, nobody really gives a damn here. Salarymen eat alone, students eat alone, travelers like me eat alone, and many restaurants routinely accommodate one person without making the experience feel like some consolation prize. For a solo traveler, that means there is almost never any social pressure to find someone to eat with simply because dinner time rolled around.
Ramen shops, sushi counters, soba and udon places, curry joints, gyudon chains, cafes, and plenty of other restaurants make one-person dining completely frictionless. You just sit down, eat, pay, and leave. There is no empty chair staring back at you or giant four-person table making you feel like you are occupying more space than you should. In many places, eating alone is so normal that you are barely even a category worth noticing. Nobody is looking over and wondering what sad series of events left you eating dinner by yourself.
The only real caveat is that some meals are fundamentally shaped around having another person there. Kaiseki is the clearest example because it unfolds slowly over multiple courses, which is lovely when you are drinking, talking, and spending the evening with someone. Alone, though, a 90-minute dinner can start feeling like agony because there is absolutely nothing to do between courses except stare into space and attack the next plate the second it arrives. Yakiniku and other cook-at-the-table meals can feel similar. You can absolutely eat them alone, but the pacing and ritual make far more sense when there is somebody sitting across from you.
Best Things to Do on Your Own
For the most part, Japan does not really change shape just because you are traveling alone. A castle is still a castle, an onsen still feels just as good, and a beautiful view does not suddenly become less impressive because nobody is standing beside you. What changes is how much control you have over the experience. There is no need to find some special list of activities designed for solo travelers. Almost everything you would normally want to do in Japan works perfectly well alone, only without having to coordinate the day around everyone else.
That becomes especially obvious at places that take time to properly explore. Nobody is getting tired before you are, complaining about another staircase, asking when lunch is, or deciding that the museum has gone on long enough. Likewise, if somewhere turns out to be a dud, you can leave immediately rather than waiting around because someone else inexplicably loves it. When I am traveling alone, the amount of time I spend somewhere is almost entirely determined by how interested I actually am. That might sound obvious, but being able to explore at your own pace is an incredible luxury once you get used to it.
You also avoid all of the little bits of group administration that quietly eat into a day. Nobody needs twenty attempts at the same selfie, nobody disappears into the gift shop, and nobody suddenly decides that everyone needs to pose together for a photo when you were trying to read what actually happened there. If I want to take pictures, I take them. If I would rather spend half an hour staring at some obscure artifact or reading every plaque in sight, I can do that instead. Traveling solo lets you engage with a place rather than constantly managing how everyone else wants to experience it.
More importantly, being alone can make it easier to actually fall into the experience itself. When a group of overseas travelers explores Japan together, they inevitably carry their own little social bubble around with them, talking, joking, complaining, and reacting to everything as a unit. Remove that bubble and you can immerse yourself in the place instead. A hard mountain climb somewhere like Mt. Omine with friends can quickly become collective shared misery, with everyone huffing, puffing, and bitching about how much farther there is to go. Alone, it’s a personal pilgrimage.
Of course, not everything is improved by removing other human beings from the equation. Some nightlife, amusement parks, escape rooms, and other activities built around shared interaction simply make more sense with a group. Something like those accursed street go-karts in Tokyo would probably be pretty sad to do completely alone, though not that any regular reader of this blog would ever dream of partaking in such an eccentric activity. Solo travel is not about proving that every experience is better without company. The point is that an enormous amount of Japan does not require company in the first place.
Solo Female Travel in Japan
This should really not come as a shock to anyone who has made it this far, but I am actually not a chick. Despite my apparently convincing attempt to LARP as an ama diver during a trip to Mie Prefecture, as evidenced in the photo above, I do not possess boobs or that particular set of chromosomes. Ergo, I have never traveled across Japan alone as a woman, and I don’t have a lived experience to share about what doing so actually feels like. Rather than cosplay as an authority on something I cannot personally experience, I’ll keep this part decidedly more encyclopedic.
The most obvious concern specific to women is unwanted attention on crowded trains. Chikan, or groping, remains enough of a problem that a number of rail operators run women-only cars during certain weekday commuting periods. This is not some tourist-only precaution for foreign women either. Chikan is a recognized problem for Japanese women as well. Upskirting and other inappropriate behavior also occur, particularly when trains are packed. These cars are not available everywhere or at every hour, so look for the markings on the platform rather than assuming one will exist.
Additionally, nightlife deserves a little extra consideration. As I covered above, drink spiking, theft, and sexual assault can happen in Japan despite the country’s deserved reputation for safety, especially in major entertainment districts. Watch your drink, avoid following touts, and retain enough awareness to know how you are getting back to your accommodation. If having another layer of separation makes you more comfortable, there are also women-only capsule hotels as well as hostels and other properties with female-only floors. None of these precautions mean you should be afraid of going out alone. They are simply things male travelers like me rarely need to think about in quite the same way.
It is also worth knowing where to turn if something does happen. For an immediate emergency, call 110 for the police, or get the attention of station staff if an incident happens on a train. Japan also has dedicated support for victims of sexual assault, including the nationwide #8891 line that connects callers with their nearest Sexual Assault Relief/Referral Centre. There is additionally a police hotline at 8103 for victims of sexual crimes, though English support and the availability of a female officer can vary. Hopefully, you will never need any of this information, but it is considerably better to know beforehand than to frantically Google after the fact.
Beyond those considerations, solo travel in Japan for women is not fundamentally some different species of trip. You still need mobile data, sensible accommodation, a handle on transportation, some backup money, and enough common sense not to wander blindly into obviously questionable situations. The attractions, trains, restaurants, and freedom I have spent this entire article talking about are all still there. The itinerary does not need to change simply because you are a woman, but there are a few additional things worth keeping in the back of your mind. I cannot give you firsthand advice on those realities, but I would be remiss to pretend they do not exist.
Japan Solo Travel Itineraries
When I am building a solo itinerary in Japan, I generally plan around transportation hubs rather than trying to sleep as close as possible to every attraction I want to visit. The reason is simple: once sightseeing is over for the day, I still need something to do with myself. If you’re traveling with friends, you can fall back on banter with buddies, hang around the hotel, grab drinks together, or otherwise entertain each other. Alone, you don’t have that luxury. I would much rather return somewhere with restaurants, bars, an onsen, and a city to wander than spend the evening trapped somewhere that went completely dead at 6:00 PM.
My most recent trip through Kagawa is a good example. Kotohira-gu was one of the places I wanted to visit, but that did not mean I needed to stay right beside it. Instead, Takamatsu made far more sense as a base because it gave me transportation options during the day and plenty of things to do once I returned at night. From there, I could use the daylight hours for day trips farther afield and then come back to somewhere that still had a pulse. For solo travel, I think that hub-and-spoke shape works considerably better than moving hotels every time an attraction appears somewhere else on the map.
This is also where my AI trip planner has become incredibly useful. I use it all the time to look for easy additions around whatever major anchor has already determined the general shape of a trip. Rather than asking it to invent an entire vacation from scratch, I usually know the main place I am going and then use the tool to see what else can logically fit around it. When I was planning that Kagawa trip, for example, it helped surface the Shiwaku Islands as something I could work into an itinerary after Marugame Castle that already had other reasons for bringing me to the prefecture.
That kind of flexibility matters even more when you’re traveling alone because there is nobody else whose wishlist needs to be accommodated. If the weather looks better somewhere else, a connection works unexpectedly well, or you discover another destination that fits neatly between two things you already planned, you can simply change course. At the same time, I would not use that freedom as an excuse to create some insane itinerary involving six hotels in seven nights. Give yourself a few well-connected bases, pack the days with whatever interests you, and preserve enough slack that you can follow an unexpected lead when one appears.
Ultimately, I think the best solo itineraries are built around a strong trip anchor and then given enough time to go deep. Pick somewhere with enough to keep you occupied for several days, use it as a base for the destinations around it, and resist the urge to turn Japan into a checklist of disconnected highlights. This kind of slower travel works particularly well for a solivagant because there are fewer distractions pulling your attention away from the place itself. There is no banter with buddies filling every quiet moment or somebody else’s agenda dragging you toward the next stop. You can simply sink into whatever corner of Japan brought you there in the first place and explore it until you actually feel finished.
Until next time travelers…
