How to find and apply for a monthly car park in Japan?

Those who possess a car probably want to rent an apartment with a car park. However, when you rent an apartment without a car part for some reasons like apartment location and budget of rent, you need to find a place to park a car by yourself.

Actually, the number of car parks are way fewer than the number of apartments that you have a lot of chances to find with inserts between newspaper.

I am going to explain how you can find and select a monthly car park which meets your conditions.

Japanese car park outline

Monthly car park “Tsukigime” (月極め)

This is a car park that you can rent on a monthly basis. Same as you rent an apartment, when you rent a car park, you need to conclude a lease contract with a car park owner.

If a car park located within 2 km from where you live, you can get a parking space certificate.

“Parking space certificate” is called officially “car storage location certificate”. This is needed when you change the name of the car owner or your address.

Two types of car park

Drive-in parking

Drive-in parking is a normal car park that a driver parks a car by driving himself. The word of drive-in parking is used in comparison to Mechanical parking station. There are roughly two types of drive-in parking, which are plain parking and multistory parking station.

In the case of a multistory parking station, its parking fee will fluctuate depending on whether or not, it is roofed.
The parking fee tends to become cheaper as you go up the story and then the ground level is set to be the most expensive.

Mechanical parking station

The mechanical parking station is a type of car park to make cars get in and out of parking space automatically. There is a lift type parking station which you move your car onto a pallet and lift it inside the park station with machine operation.

Decide your conditions to monthly parking

Size of parking space

In Japan, parking space is small enough to somehow park as you become really sensitive about the gap between your car and a car parked next to your car.

It is quite difficult to find a parking lot in Japan that secured sufficient space on both sides of car parking space.

Monthly car park that accepts a sedan type car is really common because sedan is the smallest car type and a parking owner can secure the largest number of parking spaces for individual cars by making the most of the parking area.

If you possess a sedan car, you can find monthly car park easily but if you possess a minivan, there are fewer car parks that accept it.

Parking environment

The weather in Japan is really changeable when the seasons are changing. Japan tends to have a lot of rainy days in the world.

Knowing these facts makes you imagine easily that preserving car at an unroofed car park will cause paint peeling or freezing a windshield of your car.

Especially, the weather in Japan is largely different depending on the region. For example, a certain region of Niigata prefecture has rainy days for the better part of the year.

It is very important to know the environment and weather conditions over a year in the region, where you live.

This factor will become one of the most important criteria to decide what type of car park you select.

Security condition

Public infrastructure in the countryside of Japan is weaker than that in urban cities. The number of street lamps along the street is amazingly few and landscape as far as you can command is covered with darkness. You have to walk under unreliable weak light from isolated street lamp at night.

The number of car thief incidents in Japan is almost nonexistence compared to other countries. But, it is impossible to say definitely that there is no car thief anywhere in Japan.

Especially in the countryside where the population during the night are extremely less than the population during daytime and is almost covered with darkness, dangerousness that a car thief targets your car gets higher and higher.

If you can afford to rent a better car park, you should find it with a surveillance camera.

How to find a monthly car park

Internet, a real estate broker and finding it yourself are the way you probably come up with when you look for.

Regarding the internet and a real estate broker, these help you find a place to park a car, on the other hand, an additional brokerage fee is generated except for the monthly regular parking fee.

You don’t have time to find a car park yourself, asking a broker for finding a car park is one choice but I recommend you to find a car park yourself as walking around where you want to park a car because there are many car parks that don’t affiliate with a broker. If you can conclude a contract without a broker, you can have the privilege to negotiate with a car park owner about the monthly regular fee, etc…. And finding car park gives you a chance to study the geography of the town.

Anyway, if you make a contract with a car park owner directly and you don’t even understand Japanese, you should bring a Japanese who accompanies you.

When to find a car park

If you already possess a car, you should find it until the present car park contract period is expired.

If you plan to buy a car in Japan, you prioritize to look for a car park at the time you make up your mind to buy a car because looking for a car park which meets your conditions is not really easy. It always takes a longer time than you expect.

If you decide to buy a car, you should start looking for it as soon as possible.

5 points you make sure before contracting

The followings are the checklist to make sure if the car park you’re going to rent has no problem about the following 5 points

If you can smoothly get your car out of and in the parking space

Japan is such a small country, thus, every single thing concerned with width has limitation. Parking space is not that exception.

Probably, it is often the case that the width of parking space in Japan is too narrow to park. You may not understand it but there are no car parks as a wide parking space as American’s in Japan.




What I want to say is that you have to look for a car park with parking space which you can somehow smoothly park your car from backside with your driving technique.

This is the point of compromise when you find a car park. There are no foreigners who don’t complain about the width of the parking space in Japan. However, in the first place, you should know the average width of individual parking space in Japan before you select it.

To some extent, defectiveness of being narrow to park needs to be covered with your diving technique. If you have never ever parked your car in a car park in Japan, you need to practice until you get used to it.

For all that, if you still feel difficult to park your car, you don’t sign on the contract and find another place.

If there are sufficient spaces on both sides of the parking space

What I talk here is slightly duplicated with the above content.

The space between your car and a car parked next to your car is ideally from 80 cm to 1 m.

No matter how narrow space, space should be as wide as you can open the door halfway at least and you can somehow get out of your car as the opened door doesn’t touch to the next car.

Make sure if you can park during night time

In the darkness, it is quite difficult to find lines on the ground that divide the parking section. Sometimes, you may hit the next car because you can’t distance perspective.

Moreover, if you have never parked a car from the backside, it is way more challenging.

Especially, in the countryside, you’d better find a car park with some lights.

Make sure the deposit payment

As you rent an apartment, a car park owner claims you to pay a deposit.

The most important thing you have to check is when a paid deposit is deducted at the time of contract cancellation, what kind of compensation will be generated.

If you don’t know this thing, you end up allowing deposit deduction without knowing it before you think it is legal or illegal.

Before making a contract with a car park owner, you should double check it.

Make sure cancellation conditions and contract period

In contrast to a rental apartment, you can easily terminate the contract and make a new contract for another car park.

Some people rent a car park temporarily until finding a nice car park that meets the conditions.

However, there is a car park owner who set a minimum contract period. If you plan to use a car park as a filler to find another nice car park. You should make sure the contract content about contract period before you conclude it.

Points to be noted prior to finding a monthly car park

Just go inspection to the car park

There are so many troubles among people who conclude a lease contract after seeing pictures of the car park on the internet without just going inspection.

Just remember there are so many things you can newly realize after you inspect a car park because how you can see a car park through pictures is largely different from how you can see an actual car park and it may miss showing so many detailed places that don’t fit in the frame.

Before making up your mind to rent, just go inspection.

Parking space certificate

Make sure if the car park allows you to get a parking space certificate. A car park certificate should be located within 2km from where you live if you get a parking space certificate.

Two steps until you conclude a lease contract

Application

If you decide to rent a car park, you apply to a car park owner or a real estate broker. Before you apply, you need to find a guarantor who guarantees your overdue rent just in case you fall behind in rent. Finding a guarantor is the most important condition you need to satisfy. If you can’t ask anyone for a guarantor, you can’t step forward to contract conclusion.

You will receive an application form from a car park owner or a real estate broker but this form is written all in Japanese. You should find someone who can fill in this form in Japanese in place of you.

After you submit an application form, you go through two screenings, a guarantor screening, and general screening.

Lately, there are many troubles caused in a car park about its usage by renters. Real estate brokers and car park owners require renters to use a guarantor company.

Contract conclusion

If you pass the screening, you are in the step of making a lease contract. When you make a contract, you at least make sure the contract period and the condition of contract cancellation.

When you make a contract, you are sometimes required to stamp an “Inkan” as your autograph. You should make it before the day of the contract.

Conclusion

The closer to an inner-city area the parking location is, the less the number of car parks becomes. In proportion to this situation, those who want to rent a car park increase more and more.

Even though the parking fee in especially CBD area tends to extremely expensive, the number of applicants is increasing even now.

It is a really hard time for you to find a car park if you live in an inner-city area in Japan. However, there is a big turnaround for parking users. If you keep looking for a car park patiently, you can find some.