Buying a Used Car in Japan as a Foreigner

This entry in the Life in Japan series shifts topics: from money and paperwork to something much more fun — a car. Specifically, a ¥160,000 used car that carried me through the final years of my PhD in Tsukuba.

Why I Even Needed a Car

Tsukuba is a genuinely nice place to live — a planned city, well laid out, quiet. But transportation is a different story.

Buses here don’t come often. The only rail line that really connects Tsukuba is the Tsukuba Express; if you want to take JR, the nearest stations are actually Tsuchiura, Arakawaoki, or Hitachino-Ushiku — all requiring extra effort to reach. So the default daily transportation, whether you like it or not, is a bicycle.

A bicycle covers a lot. But picture the day you need to buy rice. Or a day you want to eat out, and the place you’re craving turns out to be a bit far — without a car, you end up talked out of it, and eat at home again instead. Over time, these small frictions pile up into a real reason to finally own a car.

Finding the Car: a Facebook Group

In Japan, there are Facebook groups dedicated to buying and selling used cars — a mix of dealership listings and private, individual-to-individual sales. From one private listing, I found a car that looked good, and decided right there to buy it.

The car was a kei car (軽自動車) — a small-size car category that, as far as I know, only exists in Japan. For a city like Tsukuba, the size is just right: enough for daily needs, easy to park, and, as you’ll see below, it comes with its own administrative advantage.

The Price Breakdown: ¥160,000, Everything Included

This is usually the part that surprises people, in a good way. The ¥160,000 price wasn’t just for the car — it already included a fresh 2-year shaken and the name-change procedure (名義変更). Two things that usually come as separate costs were bundled into one number here.

As a bonus, I even received an extra set of winter tires, on top of the summer tires already mounted on the car. So ¥160,000 wasn’t just “the price of the car” — it was the price of a car ready to drive, ready for the next two years of roadworthiness inspection, and ready to switch tires the moment winter arrived.

The Kei Car Shortcut: No Parking Certificate Needed

This is the most useful part for anyone planning to buy a car in Japan: with a kei car, you don’t need to show proof of a parking space (車庫証明) when buying the car. All you need to do is contact your 不動産 (the housing agency/property manager) to ask whether a parking slot is available there.

Compare that with a regular (non-kei) car, which generally requires proof of parking as a condition before you can even complete the purchase. A kei car skips that piece of bureaucracy entirely.

Pay, Then Drive

Because I bought from an individual rather than a dealership, the seller handled all the documents — the shaken, the name change, everything. All I had to do was pay and drive it home.

So it really was that simple: pay, then drive. Enjoy driving in Japan.