Got my JDM OEM audio working!

Hi all, new owner of a base-model JDM 2020 Prius PHV here.

We bought the car from a dealer who has a business bringing in late-model JDM cars - as well as Priuses (Priii?) he had Alphards, Corolla Axios, Corolla Fielders, and various iterations of Toyota Crown. When we test-drove our car, its audio/navigation screen was inactive, asking us (in Japanese) to enter a passcode. The dealer normally rips out the OEM audio and put in a new off-the-shelf unit as part of the sale, but I wanted to find out what the existing (NSCN W68) unit does, just in case it did anything particularly useful/interesting. The dealer was fine with that, and he discounted the price, which was nice of him.

After searching the internet and getting a code from a free decoder site that didn't work, I spent $15 paying someone in New Zealand to get a code that did work. We now have sound again! There's SD card and CD audio drives hiding behind the screen (both working perfect), Bluetooth (working), and AM/FM radio (working, with one caveat). As a bonus, a lady with a lovely voice occasionally says terribly polite-sounding things to us in Japanese, despite us changing the language setting on the unit to English.

The user interface looks more like it's come from a car made in 2010 than 2020, and it's that old style of sat nav where you have to upload a map on some form of physical media (CD or SD card). The sat nav is currently displaying the last place the car knew it was - on the dock at the Port of Tokyo.

So far I can't seem to find any link between the the audio unit screen and any of the functions of the car (eg fuel economy, the hybrid monitor screen). The only thing the screen seems to do other than audio and navigation is to present the rear camera view.



Fun fact - Japanese FM radio goes from 71-95.5 Mhz, so we only can only pick up the stations at one end of the FM dial. However, my partner is happy if the car just has Bluetooth, and if I'm driving I barely pay any attention to whatever audio is playing, so at this stage we'll probably leave the OEM unit in place.