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are the weekend ETC cards valid north of Newcastle? wink

 

Serious point though.....as a visitor would I be able to get one? I'll be doing some serious mileage on the toll roads in Dec/Jan. Where do you normally buy your ETC cards? Can you nip into a Lawson/7-11 and buy one? Last time I just paid for each journey at the toll booth.

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This 1000yen thing is just a lame promise.

 

It will not happen until after the next budget, which wont happen until after the next election. That is scheduled for Nov 2009 I believe. So you have to wait at least a year for the *possibility* of this to happen.

 

Which leads me to say, why bother announcing it at all? Do it, and then announce it!

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The rental company I use (Nippon Rent-a-car, the only company that responded to my English language emails) won't activate them, they said I had to arrange that myself. I just paid at the toll gates.

 

What was cool, though, was how the in-car GPS told me how much the toll would be at each gate, and the total to the destination, gradually counting down at each toll gate.

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With ETC you often get discounts though that the navi doesnt know about. Especially on weekends and between midnight - 6am. I've saved a fortune in 2 years with ETC.

 

Toyota rentacar has an english site and phoneline. They say on the site they most cars have ETC in, and other vehicles can have a portable ETC Machine put in if you have your own ETC card, however they told me they couldnt put it in trucks which seemed nonsensical to me.

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I book through ToCoo. Through them you can book a Toyota, Nissan, Mazda etc as long as the company has an office at your location. I've got a Mazda with snow tyres, snowboard/ski rack booked through ToCoo, collect from Mazda desk at Narita. I've done this before and its quite simple. Last time I got upgraded for free from a small car to a 4WD MPV.

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I had a problem with ToCoo! as well. I couldn't get the on-line reservation system to take my booking for some reason, so I gave up on them, and went with Nippon.

 

Got a Subaru Legacy last time at Narita, ski racks, snow tyres and a baby seat as well. Turned up a day late because of a flight delay, but no problems at the desk, even with my reservation confirmation only in English.

 

This time getting smething smaller, no wife or child this time biggrin

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