If you're planning to rent from Sapporo CTS it's worth taking a look at Worldnet Rentals. I had a very good experience with a rental from there. My rental choice was based upon feedback on Worldnet in a thread in the TripAdvisor Japan forums and I added to my experience in that thread at posting 66.

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTo..._Hokkaido.html

Any recent reports on OTS International Car Rental? It seems popular with renters from Taiwan going to Okinawa and has an early booking special which seems consistent on their JP & EN sites (my guess is also their TW/HK oriented sites, too).
@evergrn - I'm looking at OTS International insurance policy & they include CDW on all internet rentals. They also put in a dash cam on most models of their rentals and opted to get the lane deviation warning system. I think it makes sense to get the "Safety Pack" NOC waiver + CDW based on your first post?
My credit card coverage: Primary full coverage of rental car damage with zero deductible; NOC included; all coverages null & void if I accept any relevant coverage waiver from the rental car. No third party liability coverage.
* (a) Third-party injury/death - unlimited coverage w/ no deductible
* (b) Third-party damage - unlimited coverage w/ no deductible
* (c) Rental car damage - up to full value of car w/ 100k yen deductible (Con - Most big rentals seem to have 50k deductible)
* (d) Renter's injury/death - 30mill yen per person coverage w/ no deductible only when driving
* NOC 20/50k yen
* CDW - included with booking
* Safety Pack - 540 yen/day - Covers NOC, sets tire repair costs max 20,000 yen, JAF service w/ tow up to 15k
* Premium Safety Pack - 1,080 yen/day- Reduces tire repair costs to 0, extends towing distance
https://www.otsinternational.jp/otsr.../rule/menseki/
https://www.otsinternational.jp/otsr...de/anshinpack/
https://www.otsinternational.jp/otsr...um_anshinpack/

I already have JAF coverage as a reciprocal member of AAA JAF | Show Your Card and Save® Program in Japan so that isn't added value.

@freecia
Those are pretty good coverages offered by your car rental agency! Except for that 100k yen deductible for (c).

By declining your included CDW, the only thing you gain is that you save yourself the NOC waiver fee (only 540yen/day) and that you're more likely to be off the hook for any portion of tire repair (which I presume your CC would entirely cover, but I may be wrong) than your Safety Pack option.

By taking the included CDW and then paying for the Safety Pack, you gain the benefit of likely having to deal with less headache (eg, more paperwork, pay upfront then trying to recoup money from your CC) in case you have an incident.

I agree with you that I'd go with the latter option.
(note I did not click on and read over your OTS links)

Tocoo is usually the most expensive English booking site, and required pre-payment or at least CC authorization. Others such as tabirai are much cheaper, do not require credit card. I almost always book with rakuten (Japanese only), very often the cheapest.

If renting in Hokkaido, there are many English sites run by the rental agencies directly.

I have also booked on Toyota website (Japanese only). They do provide English phone booking and full customer support 7 days a week. I often called that phone line to arrange for hotel pick-up, or reserving Express Way passes, etc. It's toll-free inside Japan but otherwise a toll call, though it's cheap using skype etc.

I never prepaid car rentals in Japan.

Credit cards can be used to pay toll on Expressway, but toll roads within a city often do not accept credit.

Me too.

Do you read Japanese, or do you use Google Translate or something?

I sort-of can read Japanese. lol. I can read kanji and do recognize hiragana / katakana. So can manage without google translate for rental car booking.

I see.
I just tried using Rakuten Travel's Jpn site via Google Translate. It doesn't seem to work well. It translates the initial page fine for the most part, except some of the pull-down menus do not get translated. Then you do a search, and it fails to translate the search results page. Perhaps I'm using it incorrectly. It'd be nice if there was a way for non-Japanese to access rates and packages offered on Rakuten's Jpn website.

So, to summarize options for non-Japanese visitors looking to book rental cars in Jpn, are these the only English options?
- Tococo (which requires pre-payment)
- Tabirai
- Look for individual rental agencies with English websites
- Toyota Rent-a-car (and possibly others), which offers phone# for English booking

Not being familiar with Tococo or Tabirai... is Tococo like Expedia/Priceline (ie, vendors that you make payment to), and then Tabirai is like Rakuten (ie, aggregator / search engine that you can also book through, but the actual booking and payment are with hotels/operators)?

Are you using Google Translate via the Chrome browser Translate option? Chrome browser translate will not translate dynamically populated drop downs (ie, select Hokkaido which then populates the next menu to specific regions in Hokkaido). I usually select the little icon next to the bookmark star to "show original" and then "translate" again.

There's a way to use Google Translate with Rakuten & JP Tabirai, it just isn't the most logical or speedy. I'll probably use Rakuten JP, Tabirai JP, & individual agencies as long as there is a clear English contract on the rental provider's website for liability & insurance. I'm not trusting contract language to Google Translate :)

travel.rakuten.co.jp, selected English -> Cars tab
https://travel.rakuten.com/cars/ is provided by rentalcars.com, not Rakuten. travel.rakuten.com hotel selection is usually from translated Rakuten inventory, though.

I have a JP Rakuten & Jalan accounts. I don't read Japanese and have used it for hotel bookings via Google Translate. The logged-in Rakuten account management page is in Japanese, English, and Simplified Chinese https://member.id.rakuten.co.jp/ A full width <-> half width character converter, machine translators, and a 050 phone number (or JP mobile if you have it) also come in really useful when signing up on new JP websites. Phone # with correct JP formatting can be a mandatory field. I signed up several years ago when business hotels & ryokans were either not on the English hotel aggregators or offered better rates to domestic tourists. There seems to be enough international demand these days that most of the business hotel chains are also available from Booking Holdings and Expedia Group at a competitive rate(-ish, with DCC for some). These seem to offer more predictable XX% off coupons vs JP point systems & limited time coupon for specific hotels 1-3 months out. Perhaps more rental car companies are working on integrating their packages & inventory to rentalcars.com ?

* I found searching on Kayak.com -> Agoda & Expedia offered the best hotel rates for specific hotels & rooms for Nov/Dec 2018 trip. Using Kayak usually discounted the Agoda rates a bit more as a "special rate" and it allows "pay later" to Agoda a few days in advance of the reservation (Kayak & Agoda owned by Booking Holdings). Be sure to change the site options to JPY when searching & at check-out, though as EN doesn't seem to offer the check-out option between USD & Yen (sneaky sneaky forced DCC :/). I used 4travel, biglobe, and tripadvisor.jp to price compare among the usual JP hotel websites. In my limited experience, once business hotels allow far-out bookings, they load most of the discount options and they don't add many actual discounts later on. Sometimes they'll add more "benefits" package like special amenity set, free drink, VOD ticket, etc. Business hotel chains used to load the room inventory a few months out but now seem to go up to half a year? Jalan.net currently still only allows searching a few months in advance even though their backend engine offers bookings beyond that.

Thanks, @freecia !
I'm sure this info will be immensely helpful to others.

Yesterday was probably my first time using Google Translate, so I'm sure I used it wrong and I wasn't even aware of settings you were alluding to.

There are many other English options, like Nissan, Nippon, Orix, etc. I use Nissan rent-a-car regularly.
https://nissan-rentacar.com/english/
https://www.nrgroup-global.com/en/
http://car.orix.co.jp/eng/

I'll add a few more comments.

1. The rental cars in Japan are all (or almost all) automatic transmission.
2. The built in GPS can be tricky to use, be sure to get a map from the rental car company because it may have the numeric codes for various destinations. It's easier to type in the numeric codes than it is to type in the names/addresses of places. Alternatively, just get a data SIM card and use Google maps on your own phone to direct you.

Maybe the numeric codes I'm referring to as seen on some maps were phone numbers.

Touring Maps also include mapcodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denso_mapcode which is a numeric string and a different navi input page than phone number.

Convert address to map codes
https://www.mapion.co.jp/
https://jennyteo.wordpress.com/2014/...ind-map-codes/