When you need it
You can’t read the machine, you don’t know your number, you’ve lost your ticket.
When you get stuck in a Japanese parking lot, the answer is nearly always the same.
First, press the intercom
There’s an intercom on the pay machine.
Press it.
They already know which parking lot you’re calling from.
You don’t have to explain where you are.
There’s one thing to say.
“Tasukete kudasai. Nihongo ga wakarimasen.”
(助けてください。日本語がわかりません。 — “Please help me. I don’t read Japanese.”)
They’ll usually sort it out, or someone will come.
If there’s a person nearby, the same words and some pointing will do it.
A translation app can read the sign for you
Translation apps can read text through the camera.
Point it at a sign or at the machine’s screen, and the translation comes up.
Download Japanese before you come to Japan, not after you arrive.
These four have the same answer
The pay machine is only in Japanese
You don’t know your parking space number
You can’t find your car
You’ve lost your parking ticket
Every one of them gets unstuck once you press the intercom.
Pressing it beats pressing buttons on the machine and hoping.
You’ve paid, but you can’t get out
The lock plate won’t go down. The exit barrier won’t open.
First, check that the number you paid for is your own space.
If you paid correctly and it still won’t move, leave the car and use the intercom.
Forcing your way out is how cars get damaged.
Worth doing before anything goes wrong
Five things, done up front, make everything afterwards easier.
Watch the lock plate go down before you move the car.
Drive out soon after you pay. (After a while, the plate can rise again.)
Once you’ve paid at the exit, don’t back up. (The barrier can come down again.)
At a mechanical garage, get everyone out before the machine moves.
Don’t park in a 月極 or a 専用 space.
Get those right, and the intercom covers the rest.
Three photos
When you use a parking lot in Japan:
your rental car’s license plate
your parking space number
the fee sign
With those three on your phone, you can settle most things yourself.
Things to ask when you rent
When you pick up the car, ask whether there’s a phone number where someone speaks English.
Some companies have one and some don’t.
Ask for the car’s height and width here too, and you won’t be stuck at a mechanical garage.
Things that come up around paying
Machines differ in which banknotes they take, and some won’t take large notes.
Coins and small notes are the ones to keep in your pocket.
If the machine is short of change, or you stop paying halfway and don’t get all your money back, it may print, in place of the money it couldn’t return,
預り書
a slip of paper with this written on it.
Keep it, don’t throw it away, and ask on the intercom.
No barrier doesn’t mean no charge
Some camera-type lots have no lock plate and no barrier at the exit.
Nothing stops you from driving out, but you still owe the fee.
Pay at the machine before you go.
When you’re stuck, don’t force the car
Leave the car where it is, and press the intercom.
That one habit covers most of it.
※ What a pay machine can do, how a lock plate behaves, what happens when a ticket is lost, and how refunds work differ from one parking lot to another. If something does go wrong, follow the signs on site and the information from the operating company.
