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Can I, a foreigner, buy a car with a loan in Japan without permanent residency?
In Okinawa the public transportation is not like in the major cities of Japan, and having a car is a necessity much like it is in the United States. Therefore, I'm currently renting a car from Daidou Rent-a-Car in Naha, but it costs almost 40,000 yen a month, so I've been thinking about buying or leasing a car to reduce my payments.
When I looked in the newspaper, I saw an ad from TAX (Total Auto Excellence) for new cars for 5,000 yen a month. Of course, I thought if it's too good to be true... but, I went to check it out anyway. Well, to make a long story short, it was too good to be true, but that didn't stop the salesman from starting to sell me another car. It was a pretty sweet car, so I filled out the loan application paperwork to see if I would be approved. I thought that being a foreigner with only one and half years left on my visa my chances of getting approved for a five year loan were slim to none, but lo and behold it came back OK as long as I had a Japanese, any Japanese, for a guarantor.
I had just done the loan application to see if it was possible for me to be approved and had told the guy at the store that I wasn't interested in buying today, but after it was approved he immediately began pressuring me to buy the car. I told him I wanted time and left. Then I called him later and told him I decided not to buy the car. It would have been about 25,000 yen a month for a 1,500,000 yen loan. In addition they said it would cost about 10,000 yen a month in insurance and 10,000 yen a year for tax.
Although I had been rather frustrated by my last experience, a few hours later I was feeling good and ready to buy a car, so I stopped off at a local Mazda dealer. There were quite a few nice cars there and the prices were much better than what I had seen at the previous dealership. I got some information on a 1,000,000 yen almost new Demio and a 1,200,000 yen 2000 Miata.
I'm still not sure if I'll take the plunge and buy a car, but I feel like I've learned a few things. The first is that even though I'm a foreigner, as long as I have a Japanese person to vouch for me, I can get a car loan. The second is that even in Japan you shouldn't trust a car dealership farther than you can throw it. No one has commented on this article. J! Reactions • General Site LicenseCopyright © 2006 S. A. DeCaro |
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