Petrol became one of my biggest sources of stress during my travels around Japan. The price shot up from 120 to 150 yen a litre in less than three months, and my Bongo Friendee isn’t exactly the most fuel-efficient vehicle on the road. It was costing me 8000 yen (about AU$90) to fill up each time, and if I was doing a lot of travelling that could be every two days.
If you look around on the web you will find quite a bit of information about how to reduce your petrol bill (eg wind down windows instead of using the air conditioner, etc). I’ve tried to avoid repeating that kind of information too much. The list below is basically what I found useful for my own travels in Japan.
Plan your route in advance
The more detailed you plan out your path, the more you can avoid situations like backtracking, driving around aimlessly looking for a parking space, following signs without thinking and ending up on an expensive toll road, etc. Beware though – the shortest route on the map isn’t necessarily the cheapest, petrol-wise. For example, the map might not show mountains, and there are cases where it is better to go around a mountain range rather than through it. I realise that there are some beautiful mountain roads (the Venus Line in Nagano-ken for example), and I drove a few of them, but, especially when you are travelling on your own, sometimes you aren’t interested in the view as much as you are saving a few yen.
Members cards
Japan has a system whereby if you are a member of a particular chain of service stations then you can save a couple of yen each litre. Check out the details completely before signing up such as whether it is limited to this particular service station, or all of them nationwide, whether you have to pay with a credit card, membership fees, national coverage, etc. Also, there are some places, independant operators but members of the chain, who don’t offer discounts for members. Unfortunately they are hard to recognise without actually asking, but they don’t advertise a members’ price.
One thing to note is that when you are driving along some places will advertise only the members’ price on the board out the front of the service station so be careful if you are planning to pay by cash. Members prices are marked with “kaiin” (会員). Some places (eg Hokkaido) are notorious for advertising a vastly different price for members than what you will pay if you are paying in cash.
If you go to Hokkaido then you must definitely become a member of xxxxx?? chain of service stations. Their prices are *much* cheaper than other chains, about 10 yen a litre, so the 100 yen a litre membership fee pays for itself first time you fill up.
One point to be aware of is that sometimes, especially at self-service service stations, your change might not actually come out of the machine but instead be transferred to your membership card. Be very careful of this!! It happened to me and it took me about five minutes of negotiating to get the staff member manning the service station to give me the change in cash.
Pay with your credit card
I don’t know why, but a few places have a slightly cheaper price if you pay with a credit card. I have a feeling it is because the service station receives some kind of kickback from the bank or credit service provider, and they probably shouldn’t be offering it to you if you have a credit card that wasn’t issued in Japan, but the pimply-faced kid (or cute girl – I was surprised at the number of hotties working at service stations) pumping the petrol into your car doesn’t know this. Just make sure you don’t get charged by your bank back home for purchases made overseas because that would cancel out the small saving at the pump.
Use self-service
Until recently Japan’s service stations were pretty much all full service. These days there are significant savings to be had if you are willing to do it yourself. Although that’s easier said than done first time around – you’ll find the pump talking to you, “helping” you along, in Japanese. It’s not hard though, and there are usually small pictures. The main difference between different service stations is whether you are expected to pay beforehand or afterwards. Also, as I mentioned above, make sure the change actually comes out in cash, and not as credit on your members card or a barcode on your receipt which you can scan and use as cash next time. These are a real pain in the ass.
Telephone cards
This one is something that I think most foreigners might not know about, but sometimes you can pay for petrol with the credit on telephone cards. You can also use these other cards that I guess would be called “convenience store cards” because they look like a telephone card but you use them at convenience stores. It’s hard to know at first whether you can use these cards to pay for petrol, and you need to know a little about “groups” of companies in Japan as this determines whether they allow sharing between companies or not. The details are also written on the card itself. So anyway, why is this important? What’s the point of buying a 2000 yen phonecard in order to get 2000 yen worth of petrol? Well, the thing is that you can often pick up these phone/convenience-store cards up for free! Like the ladies handing out tissues, on the street, sometimes you can pick up 200 or 500 yen worth of credit, which will go straight into your fuel tank next time you fill up! I mean, seriously, who uses a public phone these days anyway??
Know your vehicle
I really started to get attached to my car. She was my transportation and my home. I spent many hours in the driver’s seat, and the tent upstairs. I have some very fond memories of our time together (and of the time I spent with guests together upstairs). Like a truck driver, spending a lot of time with your vehicle you not only get attached to her, you also get to know her very well. The squeak on the front left wheel when you take a curve at speed, the amount of pressure required on the accelerator to make the automatic transmission change from third to second gear, the sound of the engine struggling. This information can help you save petrol, too. For example, assuming a flat, straight road, I noticed that the transmission in the Bongo changes from fourth to fifth gear at about 60-65 km/h, and then back down to fourth if you go below about 50km/h or accelerate sharply. This means that you can achieve a decently-efficient cruising speed if you accelerate to 65, let it shift into fifth, and then let the car slow down to 55-60km/h. Little things like this can actually save you quite a bit of petrol.
Another thing I noticed is that the Bongo, in particular my heavily-loaded baby, uses a *lot* more fuel if you are accelerating from zero than if you haven’t comepletely stopped. So when I would see a red traffic light ahead I would sharply brake well in advance, and roll along slowly, so that by the time the lights changed back to green (or blue as is the case in Japan) I was still rolling. I learnt this trick from watching truck drivers actually, and then looked it up on the web. If you’re worried about the cars behind you, don’t be. After all, it’s your petrol (also, the fact that if you are driving a Bongo then it is bigger than about 95% of the other cars on the road).
The other place where my fat Bongo really guzzled gas was going up steep hills. There’s not a lot I could do about it, unfortunately, and because I hated the sound the engine made when it was burning through my savings I would drive faster than usual, trying quickly to get out of the mountains, which I don’t think helped my fuel economy.
Non-aggressive driving
Aggressive driving is probably the best way to waste petrol. Tailgating, slamming on the breaks, accelerating around corners, etc. One traditionally “aggressive” driving habit, accelerating hard from traffic lights, may not be that bad. There is an argument that accelerating hard, getting the car speed up and into the highest gear quickly (eg fifth gear at 60-65km/h in the Bongo – see above) can actually save petrol.
