Before leaving home I had gotten myself an international Drivers License, that gives you a permit to drive in many countries (outside the EU) for up to 3 years. It only costs 15 EUR in Berlin and I had set the soft goal of driving in Japan at least once.
For my first destination I chose Nikkō, another common day trip destination from Tokyo that I had not done and conveniently located along the Tōhoku Shinkansen line. My plan was to take the train to Utsunomiya, rent a car from there and continue towards Nikkō, with the eventual goal being a hotel at the shores of Chuzenji-ko.
So I start the day nice and early on one of the first trains out of Ueno terminal. It’s another grey morning in Tokyo with the weather forecast promising sunshine for the next day at least. When I arrive in Utsunomiya though, none of that is in sight at all. Quite on the contrary it is pouring down as I leave the station building. Luckily I have my umbrella from the last trip with me, so I quickly orient myself and find the tiny Toyota Rent-A-Car office not far from the station.
At this point my biggest fear is the interaction with the staff there. I am very much aware that I don’t speak enough Japanese1 and they won’t be super competent in English2 for us to be much of any help to each other, should there be issues with my reservation or documents.
So I enter the store and approach the woman at the counter with my phone in hand to show her the reservation code. I was not aware at the time, that Toyota also has a version of their website in English, but because I booked through the local version the emails I received were all in Japanese as well. She confirms my booking through her computer and asks me for my passport and license, so I confidently give her those, including the International license. I know immediately that something is wrong. Her expression of confusion when she sees the admittedly pretty retro looking license says it all: This won’t do.
She goes to the back and after some back and forth she returns with another woman, who I interpret to be her superior. She asks if I have a translation of my drivers license into Japanese. Now it is my turn to be confused. I simply point at the International license she is still holding, but am well aware that it isn’t a Japanese translation at all.
So rather than a car, I only receive a polite “sorry” and have my booking fee refunded to me. I come back out into the rain with no idea how to even get to my hotel later and if it even makes sense to go at all.
I reconvene to the station Starbucks to do some research on what acutally went wrong. I figure out that some countries (among them Germany) don’t actually need anything more than a translation of the local drivers license into Japanese issued by the JAF3. This costs ¥4000 and takes up to 2 weeks (according to their website). So there is no way I can work this out today.
Now that I am dependend on public transport my schedule is a lot more constricting. The hotel I booked is served by a bus that runs every hour, though only until 1800. This means I have to be careful how I spend time around today’s destination: Tōshō-gū et al