Reply To: mobility scooter use in Japan
Hi Li-san,
It is wonderful that you are traveling with your mother! We hope you enjoy the Japanese gardens.
Whether or not your mother’s mobility scooter can be parked at the temples…this was a question I had never experienced before, so I called the temples and asked them.
Kinkakuji said it would be best to park in the motorcycle parking lot at the entrance as Pao-san said, since the roads inside are gravel.
Ryoanji’s answer was that there is a place to park wheelchairs and other vehicles at the entrance to the garden, and it would be a good idea to talk to the security guard there.
However, you should lock your mobility scooter just in case, since it is “parked” rather than “stored”.
By the way, can your mother’s mobility scooter be folded up and put in the trunk of a car?
If so, I suppose you could put it in the trunk of a taxi and take it to the temples.
It is quite a hurdle to get on a local train or bus in Japan with a mobility scooter.
For more information on mobility scooter transportation in Japan, I recommend that you refer to the Accessible Japan website.
https://www.accessible-japan.com/mobility-scooters-japan/
We hope this will be helpful to you.
