Driving Shikoku Iya Valley late February

hi everyone,

I want to visit the Iya Valley in late February this year. I will rent a car. do I need snow tires or will I be good with regular ones ?
if snow tires are mandatory, when does the obligation stop ?

thank you very much.

The Iya Valley with its narrow streets - especially in the back of the valley - is one of the scariest places in Japan to drive a car. Under winter conditions it must be even scarier. It is not unusual for the valley to see snow and ice, in which case you would need snow tires and winter driving skills. I don't recommend it.

A few years ago I drove around Shikoku in Feb and was originally planning on visiting the Iya Valley. I even had a cool thatch house that I had booked in the mountains.

However - I decided to not travel due to the small windy streets that makes up most of the areas going in and out of the Iya Valley.

If you don't have much experience driving on windy snowy streets in the mountains - I'd stay far away.

The scariest driving I've done in Japan is in the Kumano area along with the west coast of Yakushima. Driving on those types of roads with snow and old people driving (this area is suffering from population collapse thus the old people comment) is......

I’d take my chances with old people who have been driving on local roads for years, over foreign tourists with no winter driving experience. But for a vacation? Public transportation, ideally only by train. There are so many places you can go in the winter in Japan without having to cope with winter roads and dangerous people behind the wheel.

I don’t know where this notion came from that snow tires are some sort of magic bullet. They improve traction to a certain extent, but that’s all. I wish people wouldn’t get the idea that as long as they put snow times on a car then it’s “safe” to drive on snow and ice. I get so tired of hearing about people being killed or permanently disabled in winter driving accidents where I live (and these are people who “know how to drive in the snow”.) Often, the people killed are innocent victims of another driver.