Can you use へ and に interchangeably, as in 北海道へ行く and 北海道に行く? Are there any subtle differences in the use of these two?
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There is a very subtle difference between the two--with に, the destination is more important; with へ, the journey is more important. You might use に if you want to say you're going "to the store" and へ if you want to say you're going "in the direction of the store [and ending up there]." Is there a lot of practical difference in how they are used? Not really. |
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Side note to the question but relevant: Use only へ when you want to use the grammatical construct 〜への〜.
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I've always seen に as meaning going somewhere directly without any intention of stopping, whereas へ shows that they are going that way, but if they see something interesting they may stop or make a detour. |
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Those 2 threads asking the same question should be merged and maybe become wiki to be edited easily (particles questions are recurrent) see also: How to use へ (-e), に (-ni), まで (made) and の方 (no-hō) with destination and direction? To sum up and try to correct some of the answers already given: -へ is the direction particle. You could say it focuses on the journey -に is the destination particle. It focuses on the destination. -まで Is a final destination particle as well but implies that you're coming from somewhere (から) and thus that there's some distance between the 2 points. -のほう（の方） means in the direction of. It could be used in a case where you are giving direction to someone: 郵便局の方へ３００メートルをあるいて、中学が右に見えます。 (walk 300m towards the post office and you will see the middle school on your right) |
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On a pedantic note, there is an old saying the goes like
which shows how each dialect used different particle to say 北海道○行く around that time. 京 is for Kyoto, 筑紫(つくし) is Kyushu and 坂東 is Kanto/Tohoku. Being just a layperson on Japanese linguistics, I'll just stop here, but I'm sure a more learned person will have a lot to say about why the place of に and へ are different between the two quotes above, and how these regional differences came about. |
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へ is also used to soften に in some cases, since it's slightly more vague. For instance, at a restaurant I saw a sign posted over a counter that used something like 「こちらへご食器をお返し下さい」. |
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