Is it acceptable to include both direction (へ) and destination (に) in a sentence?


The English sentence "I went east to Japan." is quite simple - a direction and
a destination together in a sentence. But it seems this is rather tricky to
translate into Japanese.

I asked [this Hinative question](https://hinative.com/questions/23525632?)
about how best to translate the sentence, and the answers are a bit
contradictory. My question is, in a nutshell: I want to know if 「私は東へ、日本に行った。」
is grammatically correct or not.

In the main answerer's second comment, they say that 「私は東へ、日本に行った。」 **would**
be grammatically correct, because it's considered to be a contraction of two
sentences: 「私は東へ向かった。日本に行った。」.

However, that strikes me as odd. Isn't that essentially how the directional へ
particle works all the time? If 「私は東へ、日本に行った。」 is grammatically valid, then
why wouldn't it be valid to say that you can include both "direction+へ" and
"destination+に" in sentences all the time?

Hoping to get a second opinion from the grammar experts in this group. Thanks
in advance!




私は東へ日本に行った sounds very weird to my native ears. `place/direction + へ` and
`place/direction + に` occupy the same argument ("slot") of 行く, so they are
mutually exclusive. (Of course, something like 5時に or 桜を見に can be used
together with another へ/に for destination.)

To fix this, you need to paraphrase the sentence like so:

  * 日本に行くため東に向かった
  * 日本を目指して東へ出発した
  * ここから東にある日本へ行った




私は東へ日本に行った sounds very weird to my native ears. `place/direction + へ` and
`place/direction + に` occupy the same argument ("slot") of 行く, so they are
mutually exclusive. (Of course, something like 5時に or 桜を見に can be used
together with another へ/に for destination.)

To fix this, you need to paraphrase the sentence like so:

  * 日本に行くため東に向かった
  * 日本を目指して東へ出発した
  * ここから東にある日本へ行った

