Car rental in Japan

[yonasl]

Hiya,

Will be renting cars in Japan with Europcar (rental done through their app as Toyota and other local businesses still don’t provide availability so early on).

First rental from Chitose airport in the north.

Second on Nagoya.

Both give the option to add winter tires for an extra.

I am surprised cars in Hokkaido wouldn’t have winter tires by default in March.

I am less sure about a car rented in Nagoya (Chubu airport).

For those more familiar:
1) do I need an international license or the UK one will do (I never used the international for foreign rentals)
2) Will the car in CTS have winter tires? Do I need to pay extra to guarantee that really?
3) what about the car in Nagoya airport?

Thanks …

[RK228]

You absolutely need an International Driving Permit and your full UK licence if you want to drive in Japan . Specifically, you need a 1949 IDP.

I cannot comment on snow tyres as have only driven in Tokyo and Okinawa in summer. Hokkaido is amazing, but we hired a guide because I wasn’t keen on planning the driving and hiking when you’ve got bears, volcanoes, etc. around and wanted someone with more local knowledge.

[Gavin454]

Don’t pay extra for winter tyres in Hokkaido, they will be included by default.

From Nagoya, you’d probably have to pay extra for winter tyres.

For Europcar, you might get a better price booking via the Accor link rather than through the app (gives a discount even for the free/classic level):

https://partner.europcar.com/accor/en

Definitely worth checking the local suppliers closer to the time, you can probably cancel and rebook for a better price.

[PeteM]

In Hokkaido I’d check out https://www.otsinternational.jp/otsrentacar/en/ – we found them excellent in Okinawa recently.

[yonasl]

Thank you

I managed to call both rental locations and indeed:
– all cars in Chitose have winter tires October to April
– that is not the case for Nagoya so I have to pay extra there

I am using Europcar as it is quite competitive when it comes to pricing (Kayak can be used to check others).

For some reason I have a discount code on my profile (that I don’t remember where from) giving me 10% which matches the Accord page. I also get Qatar avios this way. Thank you for that anyway!

Toyota and other Japanese providers only quite a few months ahead but I did some test bookings and the price is very similar if not a little higher even.

[SamG]

Trip.com is quite good for Japan IIRC . I also used ots and all went well

[yonasl]

Thanks again. Indeed, I noticed Booking.com, Trips and others all had good prices. Rentancars aggregator also seemed to have good options.

This is a change to past experiences where Kayak and other search engines always returned empty results.

I went with Europcar directly because I pay on GBP and get the exact same money back if I cancel. I don’t want to be exposed to the JPY for 9 months!

PS: I used to always book hotels with booking.com but recently Hotels.com has good prices and availability. Plus with the BA shopping deal you get plenty of Avios these days!

[yonasl]

yonasl wrote:

Thanks again. Indeed, I noticed Booking.com, Trips and others all had good prices. Rentancars aggregator also seemed to have good options.

This is a change to past experiences where Kayak and other search engines always returned empty results.

I went with Europcar directly because I pay on GBP and get the exact same money back if I cancel. I don’t want to be exposed to the JPY for 9 months!

PS: I used to always book hotels with booking.com but recently Hotels.com has good prices and availability. Plus with the BA shopping deal you get plenty of Avios these days!

Forgot to mention that this is specific to Japan haha.

Europcar also offers a 10% discount right now which makes them the cheapest option.