First shaken (車検)
12 Jul 2026 | #car | #japan | #money | #insuranceWe bought a 4-year-old second-hand minivan (Toyota Voxy) last year. Since it is turning 5 years old soon, it was up for the biannual vehicle inspection (車検, shaken), which we just completed recently.
Timing
For most cars the first shaken is due after 3 years, then every 2 years. It can be done up to 2 months before the expiration and the new one will be valid for 2 years from the original expiration (so you don’t loose days by doing it early). If the shaken expires, then the car can no longer be driven and needs to get towed, so it is better to do it early.
What it includes
It includes general checks to ensure the car is safe to drive: do the breaks work, do the lights work, is the speedometer correct, is emission within range etc. They also look for any illegal modifications.
Ways to do it
It is possible to go to the Motor Vehicle Inspection and Registration Office (自動車検査登録事務所) directly and do the check there (also known as ‘user shaken’, ユーザー車検). However then it is on the owner to ensure the car will pass, because they only pass/fail the car and won’t fix it for you.
So most people hire professionals to do it. In this case they usually start by checking and fixing the car themselves, then perform the official inspection so that it will very likely pass. This service has an extra cost, and also they often recommend doing optional maintenance (since they are already working on the car), like changing the oil, filter, brake oil, windshield wipers, cleaning the AC filters. This often results in up-sells and shops recommending to replace parts that are still working well and could run for a few more years. The other, more shady bad practice is that when they are doing the pre-inspection checks they call you and say that something has to be replaced to pass the inspection. Since without the inspection the car can’t be used, you essentially have to say yes.
I don’t know enough about cars to do it myself, and also even if the car would pass as-is, I’m happy if I can have a professional check the car every 2 years. So I decided to get a mechanic to do it, but I was a bit concerned with the above potential issues.
How much does it cost
There are multiple types of costs:
-
legally mandatory fees: this is what everyone has to pay even in case of a user shaken. For a minivan like ours, this ends up being 52,300 yen:
- 32,800 yen for weight tax (自動車重量税)
- 17,650 yen for the mandatory insurance (自賠責保険料)
- 1,850 yen for stamp duty (印紙代)
- shaken service fee: when asking a shop to do the shaken, they usually have a base service fee for this
- the price of any necessary fixes to pass shaken - depends on the condition of the car, might be nothing, might be a lot
- the price of any optional maintenance (e.g. oil change) that’s not required to pass shaken but many people do it at the same time
Where to do it
I considered 3 types of places:
- the official Toyota dealership - their official website shows a base quote of ￥124,900 with ￥52,300 for the mandatory fees and ￥72,600 for their service fee
- a chain auto parts retailer, Yellow Hat - their price depends on the location, but the one in Nishitokyo shows a base quote of ￥74,080 meaning their service fee is only ￥21,780 (less than third of Toyota’s)
- a local mechanic, 平山モータース - their website has multiple plans but the higher ones simply include some additional cleaning (カーボンクリーン, オイルラインスラッジ), and their base price (エコノミー車検) is ￥85,000 (including a ￥3,300 early booking discount) putting their service fee at ￥32,450 (somehow their mandatory fees are at ￥52,550 on their website which is ￥250 higher than the others)
| Shop type | Mandatory fees | Service fee | Overall | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toyota | Official dealership | ¥52,300 | ¥72,600 | ¥124,900 |
| Yellow Hat | Big chain store | ¥52,300 | ¥21,780 | ¥74,080 |
| Hirayama Motors | Local mechanic | ¥52,550 | ¥32,450 | ¥85,000 |
Decision
Toyota was the most expensive, and also I was thinking that there is no need for an official dealership to do a better than average job: all new cars are sold by them, so they will be the default option for most people. Moreover if you plan on selling your car, having a history of doing maintenance at the official dealership can increase your resell price (when we bought our car it had a history like that). We plan on driving this car for a long time, so not counting on any meaningful resell value, so this was not a factor for us. So with their high price I decided to drop them.
Yellow Hat: their sticker price is the lowest, however I still remember reading about the Big Motor scandal which (despite being at another, unrelated automotive retailer) did not fill me with confidence. My worry is that they likely run a business model where their base price is low, so that they can list that in their advertising, but then they try to up-sell you a lot and also any necessary repairs are charged at a high price. I have not tried them, so this is more of a feeling than experience though. Also I was hoping to find a good mechanic that I can keep returning to. However at a chain store employees are often rotated between locations, so even if I had a good experience this time, I would probably be working with someone new next time.
So I decided to go with the local shop, Hirayama Motors. Their website (despite being 10 years old) looks good, and I figured that a small shop like this can only survive on repeat customers (they don’t have the budget to run big advertisement campaigns like the others), so they has to offer a decent service. So I went ahead and made a reservation.
Reservation
I could make a reservation online and got an email confirmation immediately. I chose a Tuesday 11am.
In the reservation comment section I wrote that I bought the car a year ago and everything was serviced back then, so I’m looking for only shaken and an oil change.
Drop off
I arrived at the time of the reservation. They confirmed the details with me again based on the reservation, and asked if there was anything else I wanted to add. I asked them if there is anything they would recommend, and they said “we usually do a break oil change, and maybe an oil filter change if needed”. So I told them that I leave it to them.
I was told that they will now check the car and I’ll get the exact estimate by the end of the day by email, then if I say yes, then the car will be ready by Friday. The whole drop off took about 10 minutes, and they were accommodating with my limited Japanese.
Estimate
I got the detailed estimate the same day at 4:30pm with a final price of 97,360 yen:
| Japanese Name | English Name | Amount (¥) |
|---|---|---|
| 自賠責保険 | Mandatory Vehicle Liability Insurance | ¥17,650 |
| 重量税 | Vehicle Weight Tax | ¥32,800 |
| 印紙代 | Inspection Stamp Fee | ¥2,100 |
| 諸費用合計 (法定費用) | Legal Fees Sub-total | ¥52,550 |
| エコノミー車検 自家用乗用24ヶ月102項目車検点検 | Economy Shaken: 24-Month 102-Point Inspection | ¥15,000 |
| 検査機器測定費用 | Inspection Equipment Measurement Fee | ¥12,000 |
| 車載コンピューター診断 | On-Board Computer Diagnostics | ¥2,000 |
| 事務手続管理料 | Administrative Processing Fee | ¥3,500 |
| 洗車 手洗い | Hand Car Wash | ¥0 |
| 3ヶ月前ご予約割引 | 3-Month Advance Booking Discount | -¥2,000 |
| WEBご予約割引 | Web Booking Discount | -¥1,000 |
| 基本料金小計 | Base Services Sub-total | ¥29,500 |
| ブレーキ・オイル交換 (技術料 + 部品代) | Brake Fluid Replacement (Labor + Parts) | ¥4,800 |
| 各部グリス給油及 ショートパーツ | Grease & Short Parts | ¥1,500 |
| ZAHREN HYBRID 0W20 エンジンオイル | Zahren Hybrid 0W20 Engine Oil | ¥4,836 |
| ドレンガスケット | Drain Plug Gasket | ¥100 |
| タイヤローテーション車検時 | Tire Rotation | ¥0 |
| 追加整備小計 | Optional Fees Sub-total | ¥11,236 |
| 消費税 | Consumption Tax | ¥4,074 |
| 御見積額 | Grand Total Estimate | ¥97,360 |
I think the break fluid replacement labor also included the labor for the oil change, but the estimate is a bit unclear on that. Overall adding these extras only added a bit over 10,000 yen, which is a pretty good deal.
I replied to the email saying that it all looked good, please go ahead.
Pick up
Next day at 11:00am I got an email saying that the car will be ready for pick up after 4pm the same day. Maybe I misunderstood their original Friday estimate, or maybe that was a worse case scenario and they could finish it faster. Anyway I went to pick it up at 4pm.
Even the final estimate is sent before they actually take the car apart, so there can be slight changes in the price at this point. For me it went up by 2,640 yen to a round 100,000 yen. They explained that the car took more oil (3.9 liter instead of 2.4 liter in the estimate) which was the reason for this increase. (There was also a small drop in the price of the insurance as 23 months was enough instead of the default 24.)
After I paid, they told me that the car don’t yet have the new shaken sticker on the windshield, and instead they put a temporary, paper one that’s good for 2 weeks (保安基準適合標章). They will try to get the sticker the next day, but they will let me know when they have it. I believe this is because this shop actually does shakens in-house (they have the certification for it), as opposed to bringing the cars to the official shaken place (自動車検査登録事務所), but they can’t print the stickers themselves.
They asked if I wanted to get a phone call or an email when the sticker was ready, and I asked for the email.
Before saying good bye they gave me a box of regular paper tissues. Apparently this is common with car shops.
Getting the sticker
I got the email next Monday that the sticker was ready asking if I can pick it up or if they should mail it to me. I dropped by later that day and they put it on the windshield. This completed the shaken and the car is good for another 2 years.
Overall timeline took about a week:
- Tuesday morning: car drop off
- Wednesday afternoon: car pick up
- Monday: sticker pick up
Conclusion
Overall I was very happy with the service, and I will definitely go to Hirayama Motors again. From the clear quote to not trying to up-sell me, from making sure I understood what they were saying to offering to communicate via email instead of phone, I had a great experience all around. If you live nearby and can handle a bit of Japanese, I highly recommend them.
