Before coming to Japan, we booked a MariCar tour. MariCar is where you can go-kart in the streets of Tokyo. We wanted to try it last year, unfortunately my boyfriend did not have a licence that time nor did we have an international drivings permit.
This year though, both of us have a licence and we did a research on the requirements. We booked a tour to be done the day after we arrive in Tokyo. We booked it the day after our arrival so that we could see more of Tokyo or maybe see someting that interests us, and visit those places,
One of the requirements for MariCar is an International Drivers Permit. Without it, well you cannot drive. We fixed it here in Norway by going to KNA. KNA and NAF issues international drivers permit 🙂 For Japan it is the Geneva convention variant.
Our booking was for 2 PM and was to last for three hours.
This was our course. Photo borrowed from Maricar.com
We went to Shinagawa around 12 so that we may have a good margin. We actually got lost a bit and then had to take a detour to eat lunch. We arrived at the place around 1:45PM 😁
It wasn’t hard to find the place, since we had Google Maps as our guide, also we saw other people in costumes, so we followed them.
Also the entrance is full of go-karts 😜
Chosing a costume was a bit difficult, there were so many to chose from. I would also like to add that we were only three people driving, we thought we would be a big group. It was only I, my boyfriend and our guide Ryan (really nice guy). It was okay to be three people 🙂
Our MariCar tour was fun! We had some our pictures taken on some places. I drove on the wrong side of the road, since they drive the opposite side in Japan. Also you feel like a celebrity with people waving and taking photos at you, in full blown Yoshi costume! We had some breaks by the way!
Three hours went by so fast! It was fun and we did get to see places we visited afterwards.
We paid 16 000 YEN or around 1700NOK for two people! It is not that expensive and the experience is worth it! I think I would want to try it again. NExt time though I would maybe bring a GoPro that doesn’t get low on battery fast. I think my GoPro had low battery in the middle of a three hour tour, such a bummer.
For those who are interested just visit their site MariCar . You can also chose a different starting place, we just chose Shinagawa 😄
Here is my Maricar Video 🙂
