Once we squished ourselves into the car, it drove really well. Smooth and was aggressive staying on EV mode when the battery had juice, but still we went through 22 liters in 3 days KIX Kyoto Nara Kyoto and lots of local driving inside of Kyoto. I’ll need to look at the receipt when I unpack to see how many miles we actually drove to figure out how efficient it really was.

In the end it was a toss up on whether or not we should have taken transit vs driving, there are arguments for both. We paid a decent premium for the car when accounting for tolls, parking and gas, but we also avoided lengthy waits for overstuffed, hot uncomfortable buses, subways and possibly fewer places to see given the public transit schedules and sheer volume of people we saw waiting.

I still don’t regret renting, there is value in controlling our schedule and frankly driving in Japan is paradise compared to Southern California, so I can actually enjoy driving around a little vs feeling like I’m in a war zone.