What's the best way to really experience Japan - a road trip or a hike?

Mal Chenu: Why picturesque and fascinating routes - that snake through the Japanese countryside like noodles in ramen - are the winner in this race.

Driving around Japan isn't a suggestion anyone would have made before GPS and Google Translate. In the olden days of foldout maps and manual cars, such an adventure had as much chance of success as a humpback in Tokyo harbour.

Today, the efficiency and convenience of GPS are a perfect fit for Japan, which is the global exemplar of efficiency and convenience. In Japan, you can enter not only the address, but also the phone number or the "Mapcode" of your destination into your hire car's built-in GPS, and it will politely guide you there.

If your Japanese GPS makes an error, it will immediately express regret for bringing shame to the nation's satellite system, apologise unreservedly, and extend itself from the dashboard and bow.

Sure, you will panic when you meet a Japanese parking meter, but they drive on the correct, left-hand side of the road, you can download a guide to the street signs and many service stations still have staff who will fill you up. They're years ahead of us!

Picturesque and fascinating routes snake through the Japanese countryside like noodles in ramen.

About half an hour north of Tokyo, the Irohazaka Winding Roads are set on an old Buddhist pilgrimage route. Climbing through stunning autumn foliage, the roads comprise 48 hairpin bends, each named (in order) for a letter of the old Japanese alphabet. At the peak, the Akechidaira plateau rewards your Piastri-esque concentration with vistas of the valley, and a cable car awaits to take you further up the mountain for even more fabulous views of Kegon Waterfall and Lake Chuzenji.

Also on the island of Honshu, Noto Peninsula boasts a coastal circuit that takes in Kanazawa Castle, Chirihama Beach (where you can drive on the sand), and the spectacular Suzu cliffs, as well as rice terraces, ancient shrines and the port city of Wajima, home to a thousand-year-old market.

On Kyushu, a panoramic drive around the active volcano Mount Aso weaves along the caldera's outer rim, before you head to the Uchinomaki hot springs and pass the contented cows on Milk Road.

Whether you're touring for cherry blossoms, snow-capped peaks with mountain towns that trains don't reach, or a soak and a sake at a serene onsen, a reliable Toyota or Mazda will get you there in comfort and style, and without blisters or sunburn.

One can imagine trekking Amy, outpaced by an Okinawan octogenarian, sitting down after a couple of days of forest bathing and composing a hiking haiku:

O! My poor sore feet

wish I had listened to Mal

and driven instead

Amy Cooper: Why hiking - which lowers your blood pressure and heart rate, and decreases anxiety and fatigue (basically, the reverse effects of driving) - is the way to go.

For centuries, artists, gurus and philosophers have been inspired to greatness by walking around Japan's landscape. Seventeenth-century writer Matsuo Basho wrote more than 1000 haiku poems while wandering his country's sacred mountains, shrines, forests and temples. We can safely assume that lines like "the days and months are the travellers of eternity," would not have sprung forth in a Toyota Yaris on the Tohoku Expressway.

Way before Basho, ancient pilgrims traversed the land to pay homage to its deities. They still walk, because the path to enlightenment is not a three-lane highway. About 70 per cent of Japan is mountains, with more than 20 peaks towering over 3000 metres. Their slopes are cloaked in cedar forests, waterfalls, bamboo groves - all emanating energy worshipped for thousands of years, their secrets shared only with those on foot.

This is moving at its most moving. On the Shikoku trail, thought to be Japan's oldest pilgrimage, your progress around 88 temples on Shikoku island conjures the spirit of legendary Buddhist monk Kobo Daishi, who first walked the route in the year 815. In such hallowed company, you won't mind that the full 1200-kilometre circuit takes eight weeks. That's the whole point. You could dip into the Kumano Kodo's 370-kilometre network of pilgrim pathways over a couple of days, but how much better to spend weeks wandering through 99 shrines in primeval forests and communing with wonders like Japan's tallest waterfall, Nachi-no-Otaki, where four rivers plunge together down a 133-metre vertical cliff.

Nakasendo Highway isn't for cars. It's for slow, mindful progress along a 7th-century samurai route through idyllic countryside between Tokyo and Kyoto. Time forgot its historical little post towns with their wooden inns and cobblestone paths. Same with Nara prefecture's Yamanobe-no-michi Trail, Japan's oldest recorded trail and home to Mount Miwa's Omiwa Shinto Shrine. Sacred to sake makers, too, it's surrounded by breweries offering their wares - another potent argument for leaving the car at home.

For a healing walk in the bark, you can indulge in forest bathing or shinrin-yoku, which lowers your blood pressure and heart rate, and decreases anxiety and fatigue. Basically, the reverse effects of driving. The tough trek to the centre of southern island Yakushima rewards you with an audience with Jomon Sugi, an ancient cedar celebri-tree thought to be up to 7000 years old.

The only Zen master I know to revere the motor vehicle was Mr Miyagi. While Mal's waxing on, waxing off while struggling to sync Google Translate with his Japanese GPS, remember that the Buddha himself said: "No matter what path you choose, really walk it."

He did not say: "Rent a Nissan."