Our intinerary is as follows;
2 nights in Tokyo to start with. We know this isn't enough but we will likely day trip from Yokohama at the end other end of the trip.
From there we start using our train pass to go to Nagoya. We will experience the full might of the rush hour with our 6.53am train from Shinjuku station which might be a bit crazy. Here we will visit the Toyota museum which should be pretty cool. If we have time we will try and fit in a trip to the famous Carland where there are some rather nice AE86's.
The next day another bullet train and we go to Hiroshima. We are staying near the peace gardens, so will do that, but doubt we'll have much time to explore much beyond that. Maybe some nice beer and relax.
Then it's on the Nozomi (fastest bullet train) to Kyoto where we are staying at a Ryokan hotel, so traditional Japanese style. These are really supposed to be smaller family run inns, but we are staying in a posh one so to speak.
The next day is a bit mental as we will have to take the train to Yokohama, pick up a GT86 hire car and drive 100 miles to Gunma. Again another Ryokan hotel set in the mountains with hot springs. This will on Mount Haruna which was of course immortalised in the Initial D where it is called Mount Akina (Home of the Akina Speedstars!).
We have a factory tour at Subaru, but unfortunately this doesn't include the GT86/BRZ, which I'm a little bit gutted about. So we will get to see various other Subarus being built.
We are hoping to have a little time to take in the Initial D locations and drive Mount Haruna on the Touge even if it does have speedhumps now.
From there we have a long drive over the mountains to Mount Fuji where we are staying in a hotel on Lake Yamanaka with a view of Mount Fuji.
The next day we drive to Yokohama, maybe taking in some of Odawara and the mountain train.
Then we have 6 days in Yokohama to do various things. We couldn't get a Tein factory tour in the end and contacts with Japanese Facebook friends has not been as helpful as I might have hoped, so we have nothing planned apart from 86 day at Fuji on Sunday the 3rd August.
Though it does look like we are going to meet up with Akira, a FB AE86 owning friend and we may get to a tuner shop with him.
We will go to Super Autobacs, likely spend another day in Tokyo and also do some driving around the Hakone area for more Initial D heritage. We were going to hire an AE86 and Hakosuka from Initial Drive (7 Tune) but they've been totally useless so I've given up on that. So we'll drive it in the GT86 instead.
We do of course expect to find other areas of interest so having a bit of flexibility to change our plans in Yokohama is probably a good thing.
