I’ll be traveling to Japan soon and realized I have the following conundrum:
I hold a US passport (English name only and passport number), an APRC (English + Chinese name, APRC number, also lists my US passport number), a Taiwanese drivers license (Chinese name only, APRC number only), and the Japanese translation of my license from the local DMV (Chinese name only, APRC number only).
Now, my car rental place says to bring my passport, Taiwan driver’s license, and official translation. Great. Except there really isn’t anything linking my passport to my drivers license apart from the taped on photo of me from years ago. I called the rental agency and explained the situation and explained that my APRC is the link between all these documents and they said “Ok, bring all the documents to the shop on the day of your rental and we will decide if you can rent the car”. I asked if I could email the documents for them to check in advance: “No”. Hmmm. “The shop says it will probably be ok, but we cannot guarantee we will let you rent the car”. Great.
Has anyone been in the same situation? Should I be worried or is it all going to be ok?
Drove already a few times in JP like this. Bring all the docs, APRC, passport, Tw licence and the translation. They might be surprised at first, but that’s it.
I own a car in Japan and have an auto insurance policy there. I also have a shako shomeisho (proof of parking certificate) issued by the local police. In each instance my passport, Taiwan driver’s license, and translation were all accepted without question by the various entities involved.
Just to add to the previous experiences, I had the same license situation a few years ago and had no problems renting a car in Japan. That was on the smaller Yaeyama Islands so I don’t know if that makes a difference.
My Taiwan Drivers licence is in my English name. But that came with its own set of problems.
Had to get them to correct the name on entering the application into the system… at first they entered my English name as “Alien Resident Certificate”, luckily I picked it up on the day before the licence was issued.
I managed to rent a car in Okinawa and Ishigaki last year with my Taiwan driver license, the Japanese translation and a stamped photocopy of my German passport (arrived with a cruise ship from Keelung - and apparently it’s the policy for cruise tourists that they keep ARC and passport for the duration of the cruise and only leave you with a stamped passport copy…).
I was kinda worried when I learned the day before renting the car that the cruise company wouldn’t give me back my passport - but it worked out without any issues at both rental car companies.
However, some rental car agencies seem to insist on a original passport…
They told us that this is the policy of Japan’s immigration and there’s nothing they can do
Luckily we weren’t facing the issue the people in front of us in the line for the service counter were facing: They hadn’t gotten the memo (somewhere in the fine-print…) that they had to leave the ship on the first day to handle immigration formalities and thus were stuck on the ship for the remainder of the cruise
