Daihatsu Tanto: An Okinawa Rental Kei Car That Gets More Fun

The mechanical-feeling Tanto kei car I drove all over Okinawa

Haisai! I’m CULT.
Today’s Okinawa rental is a bit of an adventure.. the Daihatsu Tanto. Why all the fuss right from the start? Well, it has no rear camera, and even though it’s an automatic, this kei car feels very mechanical. So.. it’s cheap to rent, too
If you’re two or three guys traveling together, this car will give you plenty to laugh about over drinks.

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How to Use Self-Service Petrol Stations in Okinawa

Before returning your rental car in Okinawa, you'll need to refuel. Today, let's learn how to use a self-service petrol station. It's not too difficult, so anyone can easily follow along.

You can book this Tanto through Aosora Rent-a-Car, but airport pickup isn’t available. You can collect it in central Naha instead, and they’ll deliver it to the place you want at the time you choose. If.. you’d like delivery in central Okinawa, there’s an extra delivery fee of 5,000 yen.
I just.. asked them to bring it to my home.
The rates followed the Japanese peak and off-peak seasons when I rented it in July 2025. August was the busiest month at 7,000 yen per day. Off-peak, it was 4,500 yen.. Why nearly double..? And somehow they still get fully booked..

The Tanto is made by Daihatsu, a brand that might be unfamiliar to Koreans.
How do I put it.. If Toyota is an iPhone, is Daihatsu an iPhone SE? A bit like Korean Air and Jin Air?
So Toyota goes for a slightly premium image, while Daihatsu makes cars that offer value for money. Having driven several Daihatsu models, my impression is.. Toyota sticks to its own style within a set of rules, while Daihatsu just makes whatever cars it feels like making.
Which means.. Daihatsu has quite a few weird.. fun cars. The Tanto included.

This is me sitting down with my arm stretched all the way up to the ceiling.
Just a reminder: this is a kei car. Hahahahaha
A kei car even Ha Seung-jin could drive, perhaps? Whenever I see someone in a Tanto, it somehow makes even a person who’s 185 cm tall look small. With Choi Hong-man inside, it might look like a normal-sized car, hahaha

The Tanto is a kei car, right? But one reason it’s popular is that it works well as a family kei car too. I sometimes go out to photograph the Milky Way, and I was startled to see a camping family of four playing Monopoly inside a Tanto. Is this really a kei car?

The body is.. ridiculously tall.

And.. as far as I know, it’s.. the biggest kei car.
I briefly hitched a ride in a bride and groom’s car during a photo shoot yesterday, and it was a Tanto. They were perfectly comfortable driving without folding the rear seats forward.

Here’s the front seating area.
This car really does feel like a machine. The only high-tech feature is the cup holder. It has navigation, but it’s in Japanese, so it’s no use to me. Just use your smartphone. Google Maps is much more accurate. Even when Japanese navigation systems support Korean, searching doesn’t work well because place names are written differently in Korean. Looking for Korean navigation is the most pointless thing you can do when searching for a rental car in Japan.
Oh, there are exactly two cars with Korean navigation that works properly. The Hyundai Ioniq and Kona

August was peak season and expensive when I rented this car in July 2025, but outside August the regular-season rate was an affordable 4,500 yen per day. It’s a little old, but.. it’s fun to drive. It really feels like you’re operating a machine.. Except it’s an automatic.

Here are the rear seats. This is.. the only kei car that can take four adults and all four of their small carry-on suitcases.

The door on the left side is a power sliding door. Click. And it opens automatically.

The gear selector makes you wonder if you’re in a fighter jet cockpit.. There are.. more modes than anyone needs, and you have to aim carefully for D. Put it in S or B and your driving gets very funky. You’ll be bouncing along to the beat~ I drove with it in S.. and wondered if the car was broken. Put it in D and it drives properly.

Don’t pull it all the way down to S or B. Make sure it’s in D..

There’s a charger plugged into the cigarette lighter socket. It has USB Type-C and Type-A ports, but the output isn’t particularly good. With navigation running on my iPhone 16 Pro, the battery doesn’t drain, but it doesn’t gain any charge either. It could be because Type-A charging is slow. Type-C transfers power much more efficiently, so I think a C-to-C cable would probably charge it.

This car, too, has a state-of-the-art cup holder system.
Put a canned drink here while you drive, and the air conditioning keeps it cold. That’s why I call it state-of-the-art

The pedal on the far left is the foot-operated parking brake.
In Korea, you hardly see these anymore except in Coupang delivery vehicles or really old cars. The middle pedal is the regular brake, and the one on the right is the accelerator. There’s a fuel door release lever at the upper right. Pull it to open the fuel door. By the way, the Tanto’s fuel door is on the left side of the car. Opposite the driver’s side

And this car.. has no rear camera. But visibility is good, so parking itself is easy. Just turn your head and look around.

Here’s the trunk.
It fits a large 28-inch suitcase and two 20-inch carry-on suitcases. No other kei car has this much room. This is the biggest of them all.
Look at the two carry-ons on the right. They’re standing upright, one on top of the other, but they don’t cross the centerline, right? You can basically fit four standing up like that, or even six carry-ons if you raise the rear headrests a little.
You could say it pretty much pushes past the limits of a kei car.

American Village at night. I took this shot after a photo shoot, when I was completely worn out. I usually used rental cars to get to photo shoots. I wanted to buy a car myself.. but I needed to find a parking space for proof of parking.. and finding one was like finding a needle in a haystack

I usually take Route 58.. but I had something on that morning and needed to head north in a hurry. So I took the highway. Taking Route 58 lets you see lots of beautiful places around Okinawa, so I don’t really understand why people are so keen on ETC. Well.. I get it if it’s your second visit or later, or if you’re here for work.
But otherwise.. why? Why skip that beautiful sea? That’s how I feel about it. Still, I had somewhere to be, and Route 58 would have made me about 30 minutes late, so I took the highway.

This junction confuses a lot of people taking the highway north from Naha. Go left toward Nago.
Google Maps says, “Enter Maetteuro”.. What on earth is Maetteuro?
NAGO is in northern Okinawa.

The toll gate accepts cash and cards. No Apple Pay.
It’s 1,200 yen for a kei car, and I think 1,680 yen for a compact car.

The Tanto may be a kei car.. but it accelerates better than some mediocre hybrid kei cars -_-;;
That’s partly because it’s a 100% gasoline car. Press the accelerator, and the speed does go up.

I drove all over the place for 3 days, and I think this car gets more fun the longer you drive it

Off to Bisezaki too. There were plenty of parking spaces that day, but I chose this odd spot. Because it’s in the shade.

I also visited 21st Century Forest Beach. It had been a while, and the sunset was beautiful.

You need to fill the tank before returning the car. It’s easy.

The total came to 2,748 yen.
That covered one trip to central Okinawa and one to the north. The fuel economy isn’t amazing. More than anything.. that might be because I was speeding quite a lot on the highway..

You can have this car collected from your hotel free of charge. In Naha, of course.. Central Okinawa costs an extra 5,000 yen.
There’s no airport pickup, but they’ll give you a ride to the airport after you return the car. Return it at Akamine Station, and they’ll collect it there and take you to the airport. I think this car suits people who want to relax in central Naha on their first day in Okinawa and start exploring by rental car the next day.

You can book through the site below. Just so you know, renting this car for one day means paying for two.. so rent it for at least two days.

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Book a DAIHATSU Tanto Rental | Aosora Rent-a-Car

Book a DAIHATSU TANTO rental in Okinawa. Seats 4, from 3,000 KRW per day.

That’s all for now. I’ll be back tomorrow with more Okinawa travel information. Mata yasai