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Thanks for sharing! Those Type 7 videos are amazing!
Yeah, the visuals are really nice!
They manage to skirt the Petrolicious-like format nicely most of the time, and watching the cars and the driving shots never gets old...
Just trees for most of the year, the sakura across Japan burst into life for a few weeks in March and April (depending where you are).
Lunch in a bag, for a picnique and some sake under the trees?
Even disused gas stands look attractive, more than usual for a haikyo hunter perhaps.
Like river banks, some dori (avenue) are lined with trees - many planted when only foot or horse traffic used them.
Carrying your sword optional at the time.
A simple rest-stop, now just a vending machine.
One of our neighbors from up the valley, stopped to chat.
I now notice a historical signboard to the left, and I should check out what it says one day...
Avoiding some of the ridiculously crowded locations, we still managed to find some decent roads to enjoy.
Some locations though, we still had to vie with Mini, Skyline, S660, Celica, and similar all posing for their required annual hanami kyusha photograph.
There's also a pink version of this wheel if you're really into sakura.
For us though, we're just happy with Ronal S wheels, and a country love hotel...
All your posts make me want to come back to Japan! So much beauty, so different than here in Texas! I wasn't old enough to drive when I was there, just rode my bicycle around a lot. I noticed from your pics that you guys park on the sidewalk when possible, like in Germany. What's the rules for that in Japan?
All your posts make me want to come back to Japan! So much beauty, so different than here in Texas! I wasn't old enough to drive when I was there, just rode my bicycle around a lot. I noticed from your pics that you guys park on the sidewalk when possible, like in Germany. What's the rules for that in Japan?
Biking is nearly as good as driving, sometimes better around the city, as you get to see more...
You should plan a trip back!
(Please excuse the attempted humor somewhere above, I think about Texas too... connecting my time in Houston and omiyage shopping at Guns Point Mall.)
On parking on the sidewalk, the answer varies from sometimes (in the country perhaps), to never (in downtown areas).
If you're really bored, here's a summary - I prepared earlier - on the general written and unwritten rules for parking in Japan.
Finding public or street parking in Japan’s major cities is sometimes chotto muzukashii — a Japanese saying for “a little difficult,” said through clenched teeth with a trailing “iiiii…” it essentially means, with typical Japanese subtlety, impossible. So there is naturally a range of inventive, complicated, and sometimes expensive options to parking your car in public.
The first step is to recognize when proper public parking is needed, instead of just parking roadside as you would perhaps outside of Japan. To demonstrate, we’ve chosen a tasty Suzuki Fronte to show an illegal street park as a Subaru Legacy looks on disapprovingly.
Wearing some of the coolest fender mirrors ever fitted to a car, the blue Fronte here is parked illegally due to its relationship with the white line, which marks the pedestrian walkway. It is effectively parked on the sidewalk. The drilled-for-lightness mirrors though, do provide a good location for the police to secure their yellow, plastic-coated, stainless steel cable with parking ticket helpfully sealed in water-tight bag.
This Honda S800 and Autozam AZ-1 are also both parked illegally. Though not on the sidewalk, there are no marked spaces to occupy. Ticketing will surely follow if they remain here for more than their coffee pick-up time.
The rally-striped Fronte here however, is parked legally. Though just off the road, it is on private property and thus not subject to policing. Note too that being a kei, it does not need to have a registered car space tagged to its license plate, unlike normal-sized cars.
A few years ago, most Japanese wards recognized that ticketing cars wasn’t the most effective use of police time, so they licensed private contractors to travel in pairs on bicycles and on foot to ticket illegally parked cars.
The police still issue tickets for fun, entertainment, and revenue though, so, do not assume because the green-uniformed parking inspectors have passed, the police will not swoop in their absence. Here, a Range Rover in my local shotengai receives the receipt-like ticket from the men in green and their on-line portable fining and revenue generation machine.
Now that you know when you need proper parking, here’s some assistance navigating the options available for public parking. The following is a brief overview and partial explanation of some of the commonly found options in Japan. Your millage may vary.
1. The Steel Bar Coin Park
Perhaps the most common type of available legal parking in Japan is called “coin parking,” supposedly due to mere coins being needed to secure a spot safe from the police and parking inspectors.
A coin park is essentially a vacant lot with some special hardware deployed to assist revenue collection. With space available for car parking at a premium in most major Japanese cities, the government encourages land owners to suspend their property development for a minimum of one year to operate a car park with one simple statute — all materials used to build on the lot (after operating a car park for 12 months) are exempt from the 8 percent national sales tax.
While many land owners take this to the day, paving, installing the necessary hardware, then ripping it all up again after one year, many land owners simply leave the infra in place and continue to earn from the simple car park revenues. In some areas, this earning can be quite considerable.
The rates for coin parking vary depending on location and time of day. A prime location (downtown Ginza), will be more expensive than a rural community (Saitama), as you would expect. Time-of-day generally triggers a day rate, and a night rate. Night rates are usually cheaper than day rates.
A typical day rate might be from 100円 (about one dollar) or 500円 for 20 to 30 minutes, and a night rate of 100円 for 30 to 120 minutes. Recently too, likely due to user complaints, car park operators have been posting maximums for 24 hour rates of 1000円 to 5000円 or similar.
The infrastructure needed to operate a coin park consist of two simple lumps of steel — one that rises up under, or in front of your car after you park, and another in which to deposit coins to make the first piece of steel lower itself. This allows you can drive away without ripping off your exhaust system.
You are typically given three minutes to park in your chosen spot properly and retract your mirrors, before the very low-geared bar slowly rises with a faint electric whir. A position sensor then clicks, lowers the bar a few millimeters, and then locks it place not touching your car. Cars with soft under-bellies, plastic side skirts or similar have no fear of contact damage due to the low gearing and auto-stop function.
Of course, everyone parks the Japanese way. It is safer to park rear-in, ensuring reversing errors occur only within the confines of the car spot, and not in the open area with moving cars or people. This also works well with the standard hazard flasher signaling routine in congested parking areas, as pulling out with someone waiting to use the same spot does not require you to both need the same piece of road simultaneously.
Trying to abscond without payment is of course a possibility in bar coin parking under a number of scenarios. You can try and crash the bar, and as it is facing like a barbed arrow it makes an enormous noise and an even greater mess of your under-car dangly bits. I’ve seen a few drivers forget and try to drive off, and though a slow pull away from the spot normally results in just a horrible noise and perhaps only slight damage, an at-speed attempt would nearly certainly incapacitate a conventional car.
Absconding on a motorcycle parked in a bar coin park, though would be easier, but with the spots usually monitored by CCTV, a license plate check would certainly catch you. However, some coin parks provide free spaces for two-wheeled vehicles, like the one used by this Fuji (Subaru) Rabbit.
In some high-traffic areas, a few coin parks have been set up without the bar, simply based on the honor system of taking a ticket, parking in a nominated spot, and paying the fee on departure. Again, a CCTV camera is present to put your license plate on the ticket accordingly.
Another absconding method would be to have a car that could simply drive over the bar. For these wrong-way-facing Land Cruisers, the bar provides as difficult an obstacle as an empty Boss Coffee can. A Japanese however, would never contemplate this.
Don’t own a car, and feel like you’re missing out on the novelty of navigating Japan’s car parking options? No problem! In the land of convenience, a number of specially nominated coin parks have cars you can drive away in too, returning them when you’ve finished. Here, a Nissan Note is available from the Times Car company for rental — simply move Times Car’s yellow pylon, and after unlocking the specially-equipped car with your Times Card, you drive away.
For the kyuusha fan, Times even rents a number of classic cars — this G-nose Z spotted at Daikoku Futo a few months ago was one of their rentals. The scofflaw-minded among you may consider parking in the Times Car spot, which does not have a bar, once the rental car is gone. Again, a local would never contemplate this.
Some restaurants, shops, and department stores provide either service (free) tickets, or subsidized parking at either their own or privately operated parking areas. The service ticket is then used as you exit.
To leave a bar coin park without a service ticket though, you simply enter your spot number in the electronic pay box, which then provides you the excitement of waiting to see what vast number of coins will be needed to free your car from the self-imposed prison you have decided to use.
If you’re lucky enough to have your wallet, coin purse, companion, and that passing salaryman summon a small ransom in coins for the machine, the bar repeats its slow whirring in the opposite direction and, voilá, you are free!
Sure, owning your own kyuusha in Japan sounds like a lot of fun, but where do you put it? In Part 01 of our damning exposé on the topic of parking an automobile in Japan, we illustrated what was legal and illegal, and did a deep dive into the most popular type of parking in Tokyo, the coin park. Today, we continue our series with two more…
2. The Boom-Gate Coin Park
The rising-steel-bar coin parks, as described in Part 01, are generally no larger than 20 or so spaces. It’s common though, to see Tokyo lots with only two spaces. Somewhere in Japan, I’m certain there’s a steel-bar coin park for just one spot. For larger lots, there’s the boom gate coin park*.
* since writing this in 2015, I have indeed seen a number of single spot coin parks.
Boom-gate coin parks are perhaps familiar to those outside Japan too, and operate just as they do anywhere else. You take your ticket on entry, park your car, and go about your business. When it’s time to leave, you get back in your car, drive up to the gate, which is blocked by a boom, put your ticket in the machine, wait with excitement as it calculates your fee, and after depositing coins and cash, the boom-gate raises and you are free.
While simple in theory, this is what the machine actually looks like. See how it is clearly labeled and easy to understand, especially for foreigners?
Actually, this machine near Tokyo station provides an additional option called Paku-&-Raido (Park & Ride). Sold in conjunction with a Shinkansen ticket, the parking portion of the fee is less than a car-only fee. This really simple exit machine is perhaps more typical. Note both machines allow Suica, Pasmo, and other O-Saifu (digital wallet) payments via either card or keitai (mobile telephone) billing.
This, however, is where the simple difference between bar- and boom-style parks becomes apparent. Forward thinkers would have already recognized the bar-style coin park does not issue a ticket, eliminating the question, “What do I do if I lose my ticket?”
So, what do you do, with no attendant, when you lose your ticket? Simple! We have a button for that! Highlighted in red above, loosely translated it says, “Push this button if you want to see just how much money we think you will pay to get your car out.”
If you thought the excitement of calculating the normal day or night rate was fun, just wait until you arrive at the exit machine, find a queue of cars behind you, and cannot find your ticket. The accepted fee for losing your ticket is perhaps a few days’ worth of the maximum day rate. So, you can be expected to pay between 5000 to perhaps 30,000円 ($40 – $250) depending on how careless you’ve been.
Some of the newer machines now take credit cards, but otherwise you’ll need the cash. If you’re an Aston Martin-driving investment banker, coughing up the value of a round of drinks at Legato in Shibuya is nothing. But, if you’re an English instructor from Kanagawa-ken, this can be one year’s salary. There is of course nothing you can do about it, except perhaps write a snarky article for internet readers.
As an aside, I once parked in a boom park in Roppongi — in the notoriously tsukebe and dangerous “High Touch Town” in Tokyo — and the fee for a few hours was over 5000円. Not having the right cash (the machines generally only take 1000円 notes), I paid with my credit card. The next day, my bank telephoned me as the payment had been red-flagged with an automatic stop and the operator wanted to know if I’d accept a charge billed from a “known organized crime syndicate.” Not wanting to make new friends knocking on my door at midnight looking for their money, I of course authorized.
3. Stacking
Depending on your outlook on life in general, the parking elevator, parking turn-table, parking stacker, and multi-level external access ramps combine for either maximum stress, or maximum fun.
In some multi-level car garages you drive up and down yourself. To gain access to each floor, many of these have been constructed with an over-sized spiral Hot Wheels track tacked onto the outside of the building, and if you think that sounds exciting, you would be correct.
Barely wide enough for one car, full steering lock is generally needed, and constant braking is required when going down to stop from nerfing the outer barrier with a multi-level nose dive to the pavement below. A few times a year, someone takes the Hot Wheels scenario a little too far, and launches themselves into space. Also, as a few of these did not survive the Tohoku Earthquake. Many people avoid them accordingly.
That is why most places employ the automated stacking method. One popular option is an elevator-style parking tower. A platform rises through the middle column and retrieves cars using the slabs of steel they are parked on from either the left or right. On more advanced ones, there is enough space to turn the car 180 degrees so it’s facing the right way when you want to drive out.
Often looking like conventional office buildings, the stacking parking garages are either controlled by a regular boom-gate at the bottom, a ticket machine, or in some cases an attendant. Private constructions of a similar nature generally use a single key to gain access to your car, delivering it to ground level for driving away.
Turntables are provided to allow drive-in and drive-out access with no need to engage in risky reserving behavior. Sometimes multiple stackers — like a Ferris wheel for your car — are provided in parallel in the one facility.
A series of mirrors, lights, and buzzers helps you align your car as you drive into the stacker, similar perhaps to a drive-through car wash. Once in position, the car then disappears behind closed doors, out of sight like some sort of time and space transporter. Magically appearing the right way around to drive out again on command.
In cramped cities, even residential spots are often stacked. You don’t even need to know the neighbor parking below you. The upper level is often hinged to set the car down in front of the car below, allowing you to drive off without moving the car on the ground level. As you can see, this is why oil leaks are a necessary part of the Shaken inspection. As a bonus result, though, Japanese roads are spot-free.
4. Parking Meters
The “Pay As You Go” parking meter option is pretty boring, easy, and does not lend itself to humorous writing. Essentially, just a series of smart parking meters and printed ticket dispensers. With nice convenient rectangles marked on the pavement — like occupied by this blue kei truck — there’s no need to even guess where you can and cannot park.
While the police sometimes use the marking the tires with chalk technique to check if someone has continually parked in the one space, rolling forward a few centimeters won’t help. The standalone smart-meters’ position sensors reset only when the car has completely moved from the space.
If you are really lucky, some of the Pay As You Go locations are free on weekends and public holidays. Some though, become No Parking zones after hours, and you can be fined regardless of having a receipt or not.
Pay As You Go meters even apply to bicycles. Here, the green Pay and Display ticket in a Chiyoda-ku location sits next to an equally complicated bicycle parking system. The blue payment machine is making a valiant effort to explain how simple the process really is, and with the buildup to Tokyo’s 2020 Olympics everyone is making a huge effort to provide English and support for foreigners. Based on Chiyoda-ku’s “Description for Foreigners” QR coding work here, everything is obviously going to go smoothly for all the athletes that decide to bring their bicycles with them.
5. Private Monthly Parking
If you’re lucky, someone might have an un-used car park or a block of land near where you live — remember, to register a car you need to prove you have parking within a 2 kilometer radius of your home, unless it is a kei — and is willing to rent spaces on a per-month basis. Typically in and around Tokyo, they are 20,000 to 40,000円 ($165-300) a month. Some Tokyoites have private monthly parking near their home (for an extra car, as most homes only include one spot), at their work (as I do), or near their mother (because she’s paying for it so you can visit when she needs a lightbulb changed).
Unlike similar situations outside of Japan, the license plate number or perhaps car park number are not generally displayed. So, private car parks are generally not numbered. Therefore, if you are circling a residential area and see a lot with parking lines but no numbers, that’s not an invitation to drive on in.
Note, too, please, that parking in someone else’s private monthly car park is considered the ultimate height of rudeness. In doing so, you might even come back to your car and find a note on your windscreen saying something like, “We are very sorry, please forgive us contacting you in such a rude manner, but this car park is reserved. If it is not too much trouble, could you please try and park somewhere else next time? Sorry to be so impertinent, and please drive safely.”
This is only conjecture of course, because in all the history of all of Japan no one has ever parked in someone else’s private monthly car park.
6. Park Like a Yak
This is my all-time favorite. Like these Toyota Century, there is one method that has no concerns about cost, inconvenience, congestion, manners, or ease of access: You just park anywhere you choose, anytime. On the surface this comes close to being free, but like everything in the yazuka world these days, it comes with a number of requirements before you can attempt this common method of parking in Japan.
The first clear requirement is that only certain types of car are allowed to park yakuza or even just yakuza-like. Your car has to be big, black (or perhaps gray or dark blue), and it needs fender mirrors (or at least must have the catalog option for ordering fender mirrors). 88-88, a lucky number for much of Asia, on the license plate helps, as does an arrogance to not even look vaguely concerned about inconveniencing others.
I’ve seen a black Century park in a one-way street, the wrong way, holding up a siren-wielding ambulance, and the ambulance reversed back to avoid inconveniencing the Toyota V12’s magnificence.
In some jurisdictions too, continued and regular payment of multiple 10,000円 notes — in a standard Japanese manila envelope — to the local police is also required to secure the continued ability to continue to park like a yak.
Taxi companies, some of which are either yakuza-operated or yakuza-affiliated, function on similar principles. Notably, in very high traffic areas whole lines of just one brand of taxi can and will block off entire intersections as they wait for lucrative business from passengers coming off of the last train of the night.
Normal humans with a full five digits on both hands, however, like the occasional housewife in her Cube, a salesman in his Prius, or a tradesman in his Probox are not allowed to try and park like a yak.
With space at a premium in Tokyo, there are still ways of storing your car when you aren’t driving it. They just tend to cost something, whether it’s money, the risk of a fine, or the gradual erosion of society. Regardless of which option you choose, though, they are all better than taking the easy way out and just leaving your car in a remote barn, never to be driven.
Just came back from 3 weeks in your wonderful country. I was bemused at the orderly way of doing things, the modern approaches interjected with some slightly old school tech (coin operated parking).
Daikoku Foto was something to behold. Something for everyone. I was pleasantly surprised by all the old school cars (namely Minis, Beetles, 2CV), but was equally surprised at the lack of 90s weapons (Supras, 200sx, Evos, 300zx etc), but thankfully the R34 GTR and rotary contingent remains strong.
Just came back from 3 weeks in your wonderful country. I was bemused at the orderly way of doing things, the modern approaches interjected with some slightly old school tech (coin operated parking).
Daikoku Foto was something to behold. Something for everyone. I was pleasantly surprised by all the old school cars (namely Minis, Beetles, 2CV), but was equally surprised at the lack of 90s weapons (Supras, 200sx, Evos, 300zx etc), but thankfully the R34 GTR and rotary contingent remains strong.
Japan is like that - we're all bemused daily with some sort of conflict or contradiction.
I could list out this week's, but after the parking post, suggest I've overstayed my welcome?
Depends what day and time you attend a variety of locations, but 90s' JDM weapons are common at Okutama-ko on Sunday mornings.
Daikoku gets a mostly kaido-feel Friday and Saturday nights, with Sunday mornings kinda reserved for the more classical models.
Tatsumi PA is a bit more general, but equally neat too, though since the barrier went up the main straight grandstand feel has gone a bit...
04-06-2024, 10:40 PM
