Times Car R. Kyushu - no stations available?

Dear community,

I've driven in Japan a few times in Okinawa and Hokkaido.
Now we want to have a trip around central Kyushu next year.

As I've always used "Times Car Rental" and was very satisfied, so I wanted to check rates and found there were no stations around Kumamoto .... at least not when searching via the Englisch website.

So when I tried the Japanese one I found LOADS of stations that were not listed before. Including half a dozen around Kumamoto.

A lot of question arise considering this.
Can I book from there at all? Will there be problems? Why is this the case in the first place? Are the better options than Times?

At the moment planning is at a very early stage, but it looks as if we will arrive in Kumamoto by train and leave via the Airport after driving east. So picking-up and dropping-off at different stations would the the best solution, I think, as the airport is not very conveniently accessible by public transport.

Any thoughts on this matter?

Best regards and many thanks
Jan

I have no experience with this company, nor am I a non-Japanese. But it clearly says on the company's FAQ that you can rent their cars with an international driver's license (granted you meet criteria such as carrying an official Japanese translation of the license).
https://rental.timescar.jp/faq/qualification/174.html

So, technically speaking, there should be no problem as long as you can handle the Japanese version of their website pages.

Why aren't many stations listed on their English website? I don't know, but I can assume that they haven't updated the English pages as opposed to the Japanese-language pages. Why? Perhaps they can't afford the time and money to do so. Why? Maybe it's not worth it for them. Why? Maybe they don't get enough English readers around the stations that aren't listed, or maybe they think that the specific stations aren't really ready for non-Japanese-speakers.

So, problems I can think of is that those stations aren't used to foreign users, and/or may not be even foreign-user-friendly. But why not try.

If you write the actual station on google, it comes up.

https://www.timescar-rental.com/en/kagoshima/shop/4608/

@Uco
Thanks for having a look at the FAQ. This supports my theory that technically renting there should be possible. Maybe someone with first hand experience of renting there will come up :D

As with the rest of your thoughts, those are more or less what I made out of the situation at hand.
However it remains a strange fact not showing all rental stations on the english website. But again, we're talking about Japan.

@mfedley
Thank you for your reply. I actually first googled possible stations around Kumamoto and was surprised not to find them on the website thus changing to Japanese.
The link you kindly provided leads to a pick up station in Kagoshima which can also be found on their English website. I am looking for something around Kumamoto though.

However, digging a bit deeper into the matter, I found the following information at one of the "Japanese only" ones
"こちらの店舗は海外サイトで商品の取り扱いはしておりません。
（This store is not available on overseas websites.)"
Thank you TIMES, I found that out myself .... at last (but at least now I know I am not a complete idiot) ;)

Over the years, we've used several car hire co's, and found them all to be the same (very good). I wouldn't get too tied to trying to use one particular rental co.

We've generally used ToCoo, which has a good English language interface, and covers a wide range of hire companies so you can see a range of prices and cars all in one place.

Often you find that one company has a discount for e.g. booking in advance, or, sometimes in the past we've found that one co will have no one-way-drop-off fees for hires within the same prefecture. I *think* that they also have an English language telephone support option (although we've never used it).

It *might* be a little cheaper to go to individual rental co's direct, but the ToCoo prices seemed competitive and the English language interface seemed worth it for us, especially in the past when we were trying to be sure that we were booking e.g. the correct size of car seat for a young child.

I found the list below by Googling "kumamoto airport times car rental." The top 2 doesn't work, but the 3rd on the list, Budget Rent-a-Car, doesn't mention anything about avoiding overseas business. (Besides, it's a foreign company.)
https://www.kumamoto-airport.co.jp/en/facilities/car-rental/

Thank you very much @WinterVisitor and @Uco for your advice.

I'll look into different possibilities and companies when our intinerary is a bit more clear.