1. Snow Tires
When you are getting extra equipment for your car, the one thing that will be most useful to have when you go to a ski resort with a rental car is snow tires. Japan has plenty of ski resorts and even if the season is short for most of them (from end of January to end of March), they have plenty of snow. So much that there is a famous road with more than four meters high snow walls.
If you rent a car in Niigata or Nagano, or anywhere in Tohoku or Hokkaido, they will put on snow tires as a matter of course during winter. But in the Kanto and Tokyo area, and south of there, you almost never get any snow. If you rent your car there, you have to add the snow tires as extra equipment when you order the car.
While you can order snow tires, you can not order snow chains as extra equipment. They will be useful in case you get caught in a snowfall, but if you have snow tires you will not need them. If you get caught in a snowfall with ordinary tires they come in handy, but driving with snow chains is trickier than driving with snow tires.
2. Child Seats And Booster Cushions
Everyone seated in a Japanese car has to wear seat belts. If you don’t, you can get fined if the police see you. And have a deadly accident if you crash. There is only one exception to everyone wearing seatbelts, and that is children whom you are taking to the doctor, and who are too sick to sit up.
Everyone else has to wear seatbelts in the car at all times. Including children. And if they are too small to use a seat normally (which is the case with most children), they have to be in child seats.
The child seats are a checkbox option on your car rental form, and if you have children under six years of age, they are strictly required. When they get above six, they have to use a booster cushion until they are physically big enough to use the seat belt properly, or turn 12.
Formally speaking children are supposed to use booster cushions until they turn 12, but since children with European or American roots are usually taller than Japanese children, they tend to be able to use seatbelts earlier.
3. Ski Rack
If you are going to Hokkaido, you may want to get a roof rack for your skis. Some rental car companies offer this as an option, but not all over Japan, only in Hokkaido (where there are plenty of ski resorts).
If the rental car company offers it, a roof rack or roof box will be useful even if you do not have skis – like if you are bringing surfboards, which may be light but take up a lot of space.
4. Four-Wheel Drive
It may be strange to consider four-wheel drive as an extra option, but the same model of a car often comes with either. And if you are going into the mountains, especially in winter, four-wheel drive can be extremely helpful.
That is, as long as you know how to use it. While powering all four wheels certainly decreases slipping, it is not automatically easier to drive with four-wheel drive than not. Just like winter driving, you need a bit of practice before you hit the road to make the most effective use of four-wheel drive. And remember that it is strictly for use on the roads. You are inly allowed to drive off-road on closed tracks in Japan.
5. Smoke-Free Car
If 4WD sounded like a strange selection for extra equipment, a smoke-free car will sound even more crazy. But that does not mean it is a bad idea. On the contrary.
If you smoke you may never have noticed it, but to non-smokers that sour, stale smell of old tobacco smoke is both instantly recognizable and nausea-inducing. Non-smokers are as grateful towards rental car companies who provide smoke-free cars as they are to hotels who provide smoke-free rooms.
And best of all: This option is free. None of the big rental car companies in Japan will charge extra for it.
6. ETC Card
The potentially most useful type of extra equipment you can get for your rental car is the ETC card, that is debited wirelessly when you pass through an automated exit gate.
The convenience of just being able to sail unhindered through the ETC gates on the highway, where you only have to worry about slowing down to 20 km per hour before you pass the barrier, is worth a lot. Add to that being able to enter and exit the highway from conveniently located parking areas, without having to go to a major interchange, and it becomes even more valuable.
The alternative to having the ETC card installed in your car, and being charged at the end of your trip, is to pay with cash or your credit card every time you enter or exit the freeway. And then, you can only do it on the big interchanges. It may seem convenient at first, but once you have done it a couple of times, you realize what you were missing.
Did you find this useful? Then chances are that you will find my book “Driving In Japan” even more useful. It has not just one, but two chapters about renting cars in Japan.
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