Not all regional airports in Japan are far from the cities they serve. Some are very close to the city center. Others, however, may carry the name of a major city even though reaching downtown takes 40 or 50 minutes by bus, and sometimes close to an hour. Even Japanese travelers may find that surprisingly far.
A major reason for this difference is that every city has different geographical and land constraints. An airport needs much more than a long runway. It also requires a large amount of open space around it for safety. If it is too close to densely populated areas, aircraft noise can become a serious issue as well.
Japan’s geography makes this more difficult in some places. Much of the country is mountainous, so a city does not necessarily have a large, flat area nearby that is suitable for an airport. If houses and other buildings have already spread across the available flat land, finding enough space becomes even harder. As a result, the best available site may be quite a long way from the city center.
On the other hand, if suitable land is available close to the city, even a regional airport can have excellent access. Whether a Japanese regional airport is near or far from downtown is therefore not simply a matter of it being “regional.” It depends heavily on the local geography and where enough land for an airport can actually be found.
For travelers, a distant airport is still inconvenient. A flight to Tokyo may take only an hour and a half, but if reaching the airport itself takes another hour, the trip no longer feels especially quick. Once the journey to the airport, the waiting time before departure, and the trip from the arrival airport into the city are added together, the total travel time can be much longer than the flight time suggests.
That is why people using a distant regional airport often check more than just the flight schedule. They also look at how long it takes to reach the airport and when the airport buses run. At an airport close to the city, this may require little thought. At a more remote one, the journey to and from the airport becomes part of the trip itself.
Airports far from the cities they serve are not unique to Japan, and not every regional airport in Japan is remote. But in some Japanese cities, mountains and limited flat land leave relatively few places where a large airport can be built. In those cases, the airport is not far away because planners simply ignored convenience. It is far away because the places where an airport can realistically be built are limited.
