Japan's bureaucracy is legendary. Paperwork like you wouldn't believe. Sometimes it's smooth, other times it's ridiculous. I'm not sure if the parking requirement is only for Tokyo. @boxcarblue might be able to chime in.
It could be related to the chip shortage, who knows. It doesn't seem like cars are selling that much in Japan though due to the downturn.
I recently bought a used car and had to prove that I had a space to park it as well. I’m pretty sure that’s standard all over Japan. It was funny, actually. I had to draw a picture of my house and the parking space in front of it with written estimates for the size of the space and the width of the road in front of my house. Having not been raised with the metric system, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be to estimate the dimensions.
I gave some thought to leasing a car because I liked that the bi-annual (up to $1,000) car inspection price is factored into the monthly cost, but my wife wasn’t interested in that route.
We also talked a little about buying a new car, but I just didn’t think it made sense to. Plus, there is the wait. We were told three times six months, but that was back in June, I think, so the wait may have gotten worse.
@livinguktaiwan