Japan Winding-Road Journal, Part 3: The November 30 Deadline, and the Road You Can't Ride

It's August, and mornings have started carrying just a trace of autumn. Last time I wrote about the Venus Line and how to use elevation to dodge summer heat, and since then I've gotten several notes saying ‘I did what you said and fled uphill,’ which left me feeling a little cooler myself. But the season where altitude bails you out won't last much longer. From here on, we're unfolding the map not to escape the heat, but to go see the land's own colors. This is my favorite stretch of the year.

And this year there's something else I want to keep next to the map: a deadline. The ETC motorcycle-only ‘Touring Plan’ runs from April 1 through November 30, 2026 — except the Hokkaido area, which ends October 31. The ‘motorcycle flat-rate discount’ covers Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays from April 4 through November 29, with Hokkaido again cutting off at the end of October. For someone like me, who thinks the real season starts after summer ends, these dates land with real weight every year. If you want to ride Hokkaido, the effective deadline is a full month earlier, at the end of October — and once you factor in ferry bookings, the actual decision point comes sooner still. How many ridable weekends are left? This autumn began for me by counting them on a calendar.

These two programs share a name but nothing else. The Touring Plan is a flat-rate product across 22 fixed courses, letting you get on and off the covered expressway freely for two or three days. The cheapest, the Chuo/Tokai-Hokuriku course, runs ¥2,000 for two days; the most expensive, Hokkaido's Donan/Dohoku course, is ¥6,100 for three. You need to apply in advance, but you can do it from your phone right up until the moment you ride, and there's no cancellation fee if you don't use it — which, for a traveler, is a genuinely welcome way to design a program: you can decide based on the weather. The flat-rate discount, by contrast, is limited to weekends and holidays and only kicks in — a 37.5% cut — once a single run exceeds 80 kilometers. If you're the type who rides on a whim without a fixed destination, the flat-rate discount suits you; if your route is set and you're getting on and off repeatedly, the Plan does. That's roughly how I divide the two myself.

I brought up the Chuo/Tokai-Hokuriku course a moment ago for a reason. Within that stretch — where ¥2,000 buys you free entry and exit — there's a spot where the expressway itself becomes a mountain pass: Matsunoki Pass Parking Area, between the Shokawa and Hida-Kiyomi interchanges. At 1,085 meters above sea level, it's the highest rest stop on any expressway in Japan. I still remember the news when it opened in April 2013. There's no shop, but the restrooms are kept immaculate, and the uphill lane has a second-generation Shokawa cherry tree planted beside it. Even in summer the wind runs cold up there, and just cracking open a thermos of coffee at that spot already feels like half the journey is done. It's fine to make an expressway rest stop your destination. Once you're up there, the destination doesn't need to be a roadside station at all — the elevation itself becomes the point.

But what I really wanted to write about this time comes after that. Once cheap, extended expressway access is in your hands, it's tempting to trace your finger further out on the map. If you've come as far as Shirakawa-go, some of you have surely thought: why not push on to the Hakusan Shirakawa-go White Road beyond it? But you can't ride that road on a motorcycle. The official site says so in plain language: ‘motorcycles prohibited.’ The 2026 open season is scheduled from June 12 to November 10, with entry allowed from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and a one-way toll of ¥1,700 for a standard car. For four wheels, it's a striking road with real elevation change — but for those of us on two, it was never an option to begin with. Lines that look the same width on a map don't guarantee you can actually ride them. This has nothing to do with discounts; it's an entirely separate axis, and if you don't check ahead, you'll be turning back on-site.

So past Shirakawa-go, I've made it my habit to either return along Route 156 beside the Sho River, or work in the Seseragi Kaido from Gujo-Hachiman through to Takayama. Both are perfectly ridable by motorcycle, and in autumn the trees along them change color day by day. All a discount can do is lighten the cost of getting somewhere far away. Whether there's a road you can actually ride once you get there is something nobody tells you. The sun sets earlier by the day now too, so it's worth leaving some slack in your itinerary. Gear-wise, we're entering a season where summer kit alone starts to feel thin — a morning at a thousand meters and an afternoon on the flats belong to entirely different seasons, so pack something you can layer on and off. Buy a coffee at a roadside station, and spread out the road-closure information next to your map. In a year with a deadline, I think that extra bit of homework becomes the quality of the trip itself. So — where to next?