Getting Licenced

So you wanna drive in Japan, huh?

Well in order to do something as simple as that you must endure…. The Bureaucracy Gauntlet!!!! Ok, so I went down the AAA of Japan (JAF) and paid 30 bucks for some guy to “translate” my California license. After receiving the “translation” (a paper that was hardly a translation and hardly worth the money) I took it down to the driving center were they promptly pointed me in a different direction because I am from America. If I had been from any other place in the world they would have just given me a Japanese license no problem, but that would have been too convenient. So Mayumi (our company president) called up and got me an appointment at the driving center.

Here is where my adventure began.

I had to take a 40 min drive down to the boonies and get ‘interviewed’. Interview my bum, I was questioned by a freakin’ cop! In English I would call that an interrogation not and interview ha ha. They wanted to know everything about my driving history, including: what driving school I went to, how long, how many tests, my test results, how much it costs, how they taught, how I leaned, etc. then they wanted to know all other types of things- oh and this was all in Japanese. So if you want a picture of how our conversation went just think of a police officer interrogating a five year old as to why he needed to use the bathroom. So after filling out a bunch of forms, they told me to come back on Wednesday.
So I woke up early on Wednesday (my B-day) and headed for the practice course. yep, a practice course. The officer that interviewed me HIGHLY recommended it. I took the course and actually had a great time. My instructor kept crossing his arms like an X after doing things incorrectly and would say zetai(absolutely) out-o out-o out-o (out out out). So yeah, went to the driving center, and took the written test at 9 am. The test consisted of ten poorly written English questions (sometimes they weren’t even in question form but required a true or false answer). If it wasn’t for the pictures they had next to the question I would have been screwed. So after taking the written, I had to wait until 12 for the results. Yeah, I had to wait three hours for them to tell me if I passed or not. I couldn’t go anywhere either on the account of them holding my passport and foreigner ID card hostage.(if caught without those… the Japanese police would spank me :( ) so at around 12 I learned that I passed and that I could take the driving test at 2. yes, more waiting. So after waiting 5 hours I was finally allowed to take the driving test. Oh yeah, there were only about 5 people in the whole place that day and maybe 10 or so people that were working there.
So I took the test and received a nice 20 or so minute lecture on how I drive to fast and that I passed just barely! Yahoo! I passed, but yeah one more point and I would have been out- out-o out-o! So yeah, I thought I would write just how painful the experience was to see if you have what it takes to get a Japanese license. If you are able to read through this without going crazy then you too may have what it takes to endure “The Gauntlet.”