This life where I'm from video is sponsored by Skillshare.

Hello world trains in Japan are awesome

Look at this cute little one. Look at this fast one

Look at this futuristic one, but there's a lot you can miss out on if you only stick to where the trains go

So that's why I rented a car and spent the whole day driving around only to pass on through a building for a few seconds

Did I rip off this idea from 'Only in Japan'? Yes. Yes, I did

Thanks for the idea, John

But I can't credit him with the whole idea because the inspiration for driving actually came from watching Michaela's video

a lot of people ask questions about how they can explore deep Japan and really the best advice I can give you for that is

to get your international license

I rent a car when you get here because I think like no matter where you're staying whether it be Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya

Or Kobe or Fukuoka. Just getting in your car and driving up to the mountains is always going to be a rewarding experience

especially on a beautiful day like today

Honestly after watching that I thought hey why not get in the car and go out and explore?

I had always had a driver's license in Japan and a father-in-law's car I could borrow but since trains are so convenient in Tokyo

I've never really used it beyond though once every couple month trips to stock up on cheese and bacon at Costco and yes some good

Old Canadian maple syrup and even then sometimes I just take my bike

However, recently, I've been starting to get out of the city more and there are lots of great things

You can easily see and do if you have a car since I know a lot of your watching from outside of Japan

You might want to know if you are even allowed to drive here

Sure just get an international driving permit

You can get one in most countries and many of them including Japan will recognize it

Every country that has a color in this map has a system in place

I was going to talk about renting cars and I'll get to that but it's kind of boring

So let's go for some driving in the countryside plus it gives me the excuse to use some of my drone shots

And

Of course while drones are cool. I thought it necessary to capture the experience with the GoPro as well

It just took me a bit of time to get set up

But once I finally figured it out it was smooth sailing from there

Well, that was good while it lasted

Construction will always get you even when there's no one there. Like no other drivers. No workers even but seriously in my humble opinion

Driving in the countryside is the best reason to drive around Japan. Not only can you go to places tourists don't often go

Wow

You can also have fun figuring out whether roads are one way, or two way

Hint in the countryside roads are almost always two-way no matter how small

Luckily for me. Most of my encounters didn't involve having to reverse and simply required edging over to the side of the road

But there is that one time which I don't have footage for that

I have to reverse up a hill to let someone by but I do have some drone footage of the area

Those were fun times fun times indeed

As much fun as playing chicken with oncoming traffic is I usually preferred it when this happened

But just a word of warning when this happens

It doesn't mean you're suddenly on a one-way street

Thank you very much brother

Okay, so back to some serious stuff how to get a car it's easy you can rent it

honestly, just Google car rental Japan and you'll find lots of websites where you can do, so

Now this is one of those situations where it's don't do as I say do as I do. Now, let me explain.

I did a search in English for rental cars in Japan and I came up with stuff, but then my wife decided like hey

I'm going to search as well. And this is what she found Rakuten travel and pretty good prices

This is actually about two thousand yen cheaper than what I ended up getting

However, if you do the same search Rakuten travel but switch it to English mode

This is the type of price you'll get so significantly more money for the same type of cars and I did compare

so this is like

Suzuki Wagon Honda Fit this was like the compact class Nissan March

They're significantly more expensive than what I actually paid from my car

so if you have the ability to go to the web in Japanese

I suggest trying that for the rental cars and the rental car agencies

They all handle and deal with things into English so you should be ok

But for a compact car expect to pay around

4000 to 6000 yen per day. A nice thing is that you can easily get a car from airports or near major train stations

When I arrived in Okayama Airport this sign was waiting for me

I've never had this happen before and I know it's the name the car company and not mine

But I asked if I could take a picture. So there you go

I then proceeded to get in the shuttle van and this is actually a picture of a different car company just so you know and

after a short ride, I was dropped off at the car rental place where I signed the paperwork

Basically, you do a quick visual inspection of the car sign your life away and then off you go now

I'm going to use my drone footage once again to cover up some boring. Talk. Can you get a baby seat?

Yes for a small fee. Does it have English navigation? Yes, most places do. Automatic transmission?

yes! winter tires? extra! four-wheel-drive?

extra. insurance?

Basic is free, but you can pay for extra special coverage

If you like. ETC card?

You can rent one and you almost certainly want to but what's an ETC card? That you'll find out later

Let's drive around the city a bit the city is generally the worst type of driving you can do in Japan

It can be busy confusing and parking can be expensive if you're going to be staying in cities

Especially near major areas. I wouldn't recommend bringing a car take this as an example

I was driving to Okayama, which is not a major city in Japan

it's around the 20th largest but still nonetheless decently sized with the population of 700,000

Parking the car near the center was nearly the same price that paid for my capsule hotel

Don't tell anyone but I paid 2,800 yen for this place, but I'll tell you all about it in another video

But yeah parking a few streets over cost me 2500 yen, since I'm talking about parking

Let's get into that section of the video in Japan most generally parked by backing in

It's much faster when you're trying to make a quick getaway

Unless you're locked in like this. Yeah while making this video

I wanted to record the little gate come down

which I successfully did after having my credit card rejected and thankfully having the

2500 yen that it cost a park available in cash on me. Alright, I'm free

Unfortunately, I took too long packing up and that shot I showed you. Yeah, it's not supposed to lock you in like that

Don't worry 100 yen later, and I was free. Once free, I went to the highway which is why I needed the ETC card

So here we go

Well now I got it so try to put it in

The wrong, wrong way?

(Machine: Volumn Level 1)

Take it out.

(Greg whispers) Oh that's the way!

ETC card is short for electronic toll collection card. Many of Japan's highways are tolled. You technically don't need a

Toll card to go through you can pay in cash but using an ETC card lets you bypass that hassle

Also, if you're renting a car you can get unlimited passes. So check that out if you're going to be driving lots

I'm fairly sure. I could have benefited from getting one

Driving on the toll roads will almost certainly add up to more than what you might spend on gas

Anyways, here's how the toll gates work. If you have an ETC card, and it's properly inserted into the machine

Go through the purple lane if you don't or if you're unsure go through the green lane

The green lane is where you can pay a machine, paying an attendent, and your ETC card will also work there

So if you somehow haven't inserted your ETC card correctly

I'm not seeing this because I've ever done this but let's say if you didn't insert your card correctly

It's a lane where stopping is expected and you can get some help

Just to be sure and once you go through the gates, you're on the highway, which is generally pretty great in Japan

The roads are well-maintained the drivers are generally half decent and you can cruise along happily the speed limits vary

So look at the signs posted to see what they are but 80 km/h (50mph) seems to be a fairly common one

Since Japanese drive on the left-hand side of the road you'd stick left when normally driving and then move over to the right when passing

Left slow, right fast. Now just because there are posted speed limits. It doesn't mean people always follow them

I've never had any issues going with the speed of traffic in the left lane where I find people will normally follow the speed limit

Or go perhaps 10 or 20 kilometers (6-12mph) above it

If you follow the speed of traffic in the left lane, you should be fine

And because my stats tell me that 32 percent of you watching are in the United States 80

Kilometers an hour is like 50 miles an hour now if you're on city streets and don't see any speeds posted

Especially in small streets around housing. The default speed limit is 30 kilometers an hour, which is like 20 miles an hour

I'd strongly recommend sticking to the speed limit as it's very common to find people and bicycles

Travelling around in the middle of it in the small city streets of Japan people rule the road, not cars

but back to the highway I like driving on it, but it's the interchanges that I'm not so fond of

Six different roads. What in the world do you do?

and I think I

Don't know am I on the right way? I think I'm on the slower Road now ten minutes. No, I don't know

And now I'm a toll gate slowing down

this is

How does that is like insane for to me

Hey like, you take one wrong way, and it's all over for ya

Google Maps, while good, gets it right like 90% of the time

Why am I not going towards Osaka City? I don't know. I don't know. I think Google just messed me up

I told me to go right when I should have gone left

because I saw the sign for Osaka City and I thought to myself let's go Osaka City, but

Ha I didn't trust my instincts on this one and now I'm screwed and Google

I don't know if you can look at the maps. Can you look at the maps?

See it says I should go left but I'll see there's nothing there's nothing left. I'm stuck. I hear Navi time is better

So if you can read Japanese, perhaps try that, or just the in-car navigation system, but I've also had issues with in-car navigation

Because of outdated maps so I tend to use Google Maps and then get angry at it when it inevitably

leads me the wrong way and

Another thing, when you're in tunnels, which there are a lot of, your GPS will cut out

Besides the interchanges highway, driving is kind of uneventful which I think is a positive when traveling at high speeds

On the other hand when traveling at low speeds. Well, maybe it's better to not be driving at all

When you get tired of driving on the toll roads

You can pull over to a PA or an SA which are short for parking area and service area

These are pull-up points that don't officially take you off the toll road. I've never seen such concept in North America

So this is how it works the PAs are more like big lots with bathrooms some vending machines and maybe some quick serve restaurants

Service areas on the other hand have all that plus full restaurants places for your dogs to stretch your legs gift shops

It's all in one organized complex

Just as a lot of people find out that Japanese convenience stores are a lot better than the ones back home

Go get the specialty ice cream everywhere you go. I think you'll find the same thing with these service areas

Nice bathrooms that you don't feel afraid to use decent food and then overall pleasant experience

So we're gonna try some Momo ice cream peach ice cream

Ain't bad. Ain't bad.

Now something that makes sense now

But really surprised me was that when you hit up one of these areas there can be an almost carbon copy on the other side

My wife was telling me that some go to both sides to compare the food

If you watch us just for a little bit you can see the point in my flight where discovered the mirroring of the service areas

What like really there's one two, two two service areas. Yeah

So this was a regular service area, but I heard stories

Okay, my wife told me but there are some destination ones as well as in people specifically drive to a spot just for the

Service area and that's how I ended up driving into this tunnel the fourth longest underwater tunnel in the world

Popping out of the tunnel

I found myself on this artificial island called Mihotaru, which translates to Sea Firefly. From there

You can see Tokyo Bay go shopping and check out the "Kaze no Tou", Tower of wind

That's a big air intake for the whole tunnel system

This is in fact the real blade that they use to cut the tunnel that I just drove through

Unfortunately and

Understandably, there's a drone ban here. So no shots of this from overhead. However, I thought this shot was cool

So enjoyed for a few moments

But over here at Ehime there was no such ban. Before driving over this beautiful bridge I flew over it

This was taken from another rest stop and this was also unique in that

It was also a beach. I wondered why no one was swimming. It was October

but in this part of Japan the temperature during the day got up with the mid 20s, which again

I'll convert to American. So somewhere in the 70s. This little crab guy seemed happy enough. I was considering taking a quick dip