Name: What Driving in Japan is Like
Uploaded: 2020-03-20T04:30:39.000Z
Duration: 24 min 57 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This life where I'm from video is sponsored by Skillshare.

Look at this cute little one. Look at this fast one

Look at this futuristic one, but there's a lot you can miss out on if you only stick to where the trains go

So that's why I rented a car and spent the whole day driving around only to pass on through a building for a few seconds

Did I rip off this idea from 'Only in Japan'? Yes. Yes, I did

But I can't credit him with the whole idea because the inspiration for driving actually came from watching Michaela's video

a lot of people ask questions about how they can explore deep Japan and really the best advice I can give you for that is

I rent a car when you get here because I think like no matter where you're staying whether it be Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya

Or Kobe or Fukuoka. Just getting in your car and driving up to the mountains is always going to be a rewarding experience

Honestly after watching that I thought hey why not get in the car and go out and explore?

I had always had a driver's license in Japan and a father-in-law's car I could borrow but since trains are so convenient in Tokyo

I've never really used it beyond though once every couple month trips to stock up on cheese and bacon at Costco and yes some good

Old Canadian maple syrup and even then sometimes I just take my bike

However, recently, I've been starting to get out of the city more and there are lots of great things

You can easily see and do if you have a car since I know a lot of your watching from outside of Japan

You might want to know if you are even allowed to drive here

Sure just get an international driving permit

You can get one in most countries and many of them including Japan will recognize it

Every country that has a color in this map has a system in place

I was going to talk about renting cars and I'll get to that but it's kind of boring

So let's go for some driving in the countryside plus it gives me the excuse to use some of my drone shots

Of course while drones are cool. I thought it necessary to capture the experience with the GoPro as well

It just took me a bit of time to get set up

But once I finally figured it out it was smooth sailing from there

Construction will always get you even when there's no one there. Like no other drivers. No workers even but seriously in my humble opinion

Driving in the countryside is the best reason to drive around Japan. Not only can you go to places tourists don't often go

You can also have fun figuring out whether roads are one way, or two way

Hint in the countryside roads are almost always two-way no matter how small

Luckily for me. Most of my encounters didn't involve having to reverse and simply required edging over to the side of the road

But there is that one time which I don't have footage for that

I have to reverse up a hill to let someone by but I do have some drone footage of the area

As much fun as playing chicken with oncoming traffic is I usually preferred it when this happened

But just a word of warning when this happens

It doesn't mean you're suddenly on a one-way street

Okay, so back to some serious stuff how to get a car it's easy you can rent it

honestly, just Google car rental Japan and you'll find lots of websites where you can do, so

Now this is one of those situations where it's don't do as I say do as I do. Now, let me explain.

I did a search in English for rental cars in Japan and I came up with stuff, but then my wife decided like hey

I'm going to search as well. And this is what she found Rakuten travel and pretty good prices

This is actually about two thousand yen cheaper than what I ended up getting

However, if you do the same search Rakuten travel but switch it to English mode

This is the type of price you'll get so significantly more money for the same type of cars and I did compare

Suzuki Wagon Honda Fit this was like the compact class Nissan March

They're significantly more expensive than what I actually paid from my car

so if you have the ability to go to the web in Japanese

I suggest trying that for the rental cars and the rental car agencies

They all handle and deal with things into English so you should be ok

But for a compact car expect to pay around

4000 to 6000 yen per day. A nice thing is that you can easily get a car from airports or near major train stations

When I arrived in Okayama Airport this sign was waiting for me

I've never had this happen before and I know it's the name the car company and not mine

But I asked if I could take a picture. So there you go

I then proceeded to get in the shuttle van and this is actually a picture of a different car company just so you know and

after a short ride, I was dropped off at the car rental place where I signed the paperwork

Basically, you do a quick visual inspection of the car sign your life away and then off you go now

I'm going to use my drone footage once again to cover up some boring. Talk. Can you get a baby seat?

Yes for a small fee. Does it have English navigation? Yes, most places do. Automatic transmission?

yes! winter tires? extra! four-wheel-drive?

Basic is free, but you can pay for extra special coverage

You can rent one and you almost certainly want to but what's an ETC card? That you'll find out later

Let's drive around the city a bit the city is generally the worst type of driving you can do in Japan

It can be busy confusing and parking can be expensive if you're going to be staying in cities

Especially near major areas. I wouldn't recommend bringing a car take this as an example

I was driving to Okayama, which is not a major city in Japan

it's around the 20th largest but still nonetheless decently sized with the population of 700,000

Parking the car near the center was nearly the same price that paid for my capsule hotel

Don't tell anyone but I paid 2,800 yen for this place, but I'll tell you all about it in another video

But yeah parking a few streets over cost me 2500 yen, since I'm talking about parking

Let's get into that section of the video in Japan most generally parked by backing in

It's much faster when you're trying to make a quick getaway

Unless you're locked in like this. Yeah while making this video

I wanted to record the little gate come down

which I successfully did after having my credit card rejected and thankfully having the

2500 yen that it cost a park available in cash on me. Alright, I'm free

Unfortunately, I took too long packing up and that shot I showed you. Yeah, it's not supposed to lock you in like that

Don't worry 100 yen later, and I was free. Once free, I went to the highway which is why I needed the ETC card

ETC card is short for electronic toll collection card. Many of Japan's highways are tolled. You technically don't need a

Toll card to go through you can pay in cash but using an ETC card lets you bypass that hassle

Also, if you're renting a car you can get unlimited passes. So check that out if you're going to be driving lots

I'm fairly sure. I could have benefited from getting one

Driving on the toll roads will almost certainly add up to more than what you might spend on gas

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What Driving in Japan is Like

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