As some of you may know, I and D are about to hit Japan for a couple of weeks. We were planning on renting a car and taking ourselves around the national parks of Hokkaido, but have found out that the international driver’s license issued in Taiwan is not accepted in Japan, because Japan has signed a 1949 convention that governs the use of such licenses, while Taiwan, like Germany, France, Switzerland, and some other countries I guess, have signed a 1968 Vienna convention, which is not accepted by Japan. We called the Japan Exchange Association or whatever its English name might be, and they said, yes, that’s right, Japan does not accept international driver’s license issued in Taiwan, and there’s no way around it.
However, I read in Lonely Planet’s Japan guide that at least holders of German, French and Swiss driver’s licenses simply can have their original license translated into Japanese, and after having the translation authenticated by a notary public, that works as a substitute for the international driver’s license. Does this anyone know if this works for Taiwanese licenses as well? Nothing about this on the website of the Japanese organization dealing with driver’s licenses. Is Lonely Planet completely off (not unheard of, of course), or did the guy at the Japanese representative office read the wrong page in his book, or maybe even the wrong book?
Has anyone tried and succeeded in renting a car in Japan with a Taiwanese driver’s license? We’re leaving Monday and just found out, so if anyone knows, I’d appreciate some info. If it is possible, I’ll spend tomorrow trying to get this thing fixed, but if it doesn’t work, I have some other stuff that would become more important.
Hokkaido public transportation was indeed efficient, but you’re still restricted by time tables that may not fit with your own preferred schedule, nor can you stop whenever you want to. Especially up in the national parks, busses left early in the mornings or late in the afternoons, so unless you were up and about by 7am, you had to wait until 4 or 5 pm to get the next bus out. That could easily ruin a whole day, not very fun when you’ve only got two weeks. We also missed out on a lot of absolutely stunning views going down from the Daisetsuzan mountains by not being able to stop and just gawk with open mouths for about ten minutes. These were the main reasons we wanted to rent a car.
Anyway, driving in Japan, or at least Hokkaido, is no more troublesome than driving in most other places. Little traffic, and everyone follows all the rules (unlike in some other places I know about, no names). Left side driving takes about half an hour to get used to. In the end, we managed to rent a car for one day only, when we found a car repair shop that had a few good cars for rent, but didn’t know much about international driver’s licenses other than to make sure that we had one. That rental saved that day, since there were no buses to take us around the area, and it gave us a couple of gorgeous views.
When we went to a Mazda rental to get a car that we could drop off in Sapporo instead of where we rented it, it was impossible to do so. Once again, everyone follows the rules. So, to answer my own question, renting a car in Japan using a Taiwanese-issued international driver’s license doesn’t work.
We wound up spending about a week up in the mountains, a couple of days travelling, and the rest of the time in Sapporo and the areas around there. Here are some pictures from the trip.