English Driving Tests Having Little Impact

[matsuki]

[Taka-Okami]

I paid 30 man to get my license the proper way in Japan

I think they said I was the first whitey through their 'training' centre.

My gold license expires next Jan, but I've been living out of the country for ages. Wonder if I can re-new it without a gaijin card!

[MaxPower]

Ugh, my renewal is coming up in September. Is that just a fee and new picture or will there be tests involved? (No accidents or anything)

First time renewing it you have to take some BS lame class that is like 3 hours long.

After that it's cake as long as you have no accidents.

IF it is the same everywhere... which i think it is, and IF it hasn't changed in 2 years... which it might have.

[matsuki]

First time renewing it you have to take some BS lame class that is like 3 hours long.

After that it's cake as long as you have no accidents.

IF it is the same everywhere... which i think it is, and IF it hasn't changed in 2 years... which it might have.

Ugh, 3 hours of "Safety driving" lecture

[Mike Oxlong]

Ugh, 3 hours of "Safety driving" lecture

Pretty sure it's two hours...been a while - just thirty minutes for gold license holders.

[nikoneko]

I'll cut mine short. But after failing twice and getting very frustrated, I talked to my brother-in-law who is a police detective here and asked for advice. He said it's so easy, you have to do one thing. When you go to turn look over your shoulder, then check your side mirror, move your head to the rear-view mirror (and do all this with exaggerated motions), then move over as close to the curb as you can, then do each check again, then turn.

It was the same hard ass instructor as the first time who made me so nervous I was shaking at the first test (newcomer to Japan and easily spooked I suppose.) But immediately after the test he starts gushing "Did you go to driving school?! You were so good!" I was nervous as hell and didn't understand what he said but my wife did her test next and translated the same reaction he had to her.

Thought he was gonna ask us out to an izakaya when he presented the licenses to us, his whole personality had changed so much.

(Moral of the story I suppose, when all else fails in Japan talk to an insider and learn the shortcut.)

[Mock Cockpit]

Ugh, 3 hours of "Safety driving" lecture

Sit up the back, get some vids on your phone and hope to christ the knob giving the lecture doesn't try some English banditry on you.

[james]

been a while so don't remember all the details in perfect order but went something like this:

- translated my ontario driver's licence, got translation approved by jaf
- booked appt at ministry of transport, they looked over licence, "how long have you been driving?" "eight years" "but you're only 24 and this licence is 2 years old!" "it's my third" "...ok". it was my first card licence, the previous ones were paper and long gone.
- some vision test, then a 10 question written test so horribly translated i asked for the original japanese
- practical test. i was the only one there that day and they were bored and happy to see me.
- passed, picked up my green stripe licence. "how'd you get here today?" "i drove". never put the n00b mark on my car.
- at some point in the future when i renewed and had to do the bs training course the idiot "instructor" just had to make mention of 9/11 cause i was there.

now i'm gold and i just sleep when they want me
to watch the review video when i renew.

[Bucky]

[floatr][/floatr]Mie prefecture says that the introduction of English language versions of the written test for a driving licence hasn't improved the pass rate. In the six months since it was brought in, 295 people have taken the English version including 153 Filipinos, 97 Brazilians and 14 Bolivians (Chinese tend to take the Japanese test). The pass rate for Japanese examinees is 68.7% but only 8.5% passed the English version. The thinking is that there are still too few places for foreigners to learn the rules of the road in Japan even if the questions are in English. There are plans to include Portuguese exams but the prefecture thinks more attention needs to be paid to teaching examinees what they actually need to know.

Source (Japanese)

Sombody wants to make a movie about getting a drivers license in Japan.. . . about an American for German TV.

Americans needed for documentary film (Tokyo)

Date: 2011-09-09, 10:36PM JST
Reply to: [email="job-gjafn-2568353721@craigslist.org"]job-gjafn-2568353721@craigslist.org[/email] [Errors when replying to ads?]
Hello Everybody!
We are looking for an American expat with the need to drive a car in Tokyo for a documentary film. (If you know anybody that fits our profile, please forward!)

The subject of the documentary is a humours look on globalization and how different people in different countries try to adapt to another culture.

Our candidate should:
- be relatively new in Japan, but with the plan to live there for some time (we are not looking for tourists)
- be US-American
- be available this autumn/winter for shooting (no other major job obligations)
- either just started taking driving lessons or is eager to get a Japanese licence out of personal or professional reasons as part of the documentary deals with traffic in Tokyo.
- be open to be filmed in their everyday life.

The driving lessons will be of course paid for as well as an appropriate remuneration.

The documentary will be broadcasted on German public TV.

Here you can check out our production company in Berlin: www.kloosundco.de
A direct link to the project is http://www.kloosundco.de/en/production/film/WTY.html

We are looking forward to hear from you!!!

Tina & Veronika

[IparryU]

Sombody wants to make a movie about getting a drivers license in Japan.. . . about an American for German TV.

ya i recieved this email a week or so ago...

when i went back home a few months back i wanted to renew my DL (expired in '07) and get an intl DL to use in japan as the costs for a DL out her are about... 1000% more than it is in CA...

wify said she will get her japDL... but seeing how she controls a babachari scares me...

[Samurai_Jerk]

ya i recieved this email a week or so ago...

when i went back home a few months back i wanted to renew my DL (expired in '07) and get an intl DL to use in japan as the costs for a DL out her are about... 1000% more than it is in CA...

wify said she will get her japDL... but seeing how she controls a babachari scares me...

If you get pulled over driving on an international license, you may be in trouble. You aren't allowed to do that anymore if you're a resident and these days the cops don't turn a blind eye to it the the way they used to. Too bad you didn't get your J-license before your CA one expired. Then you wouldn't have needed an expensive driving school.

Anyway, it's probably a good thing. Asian drivers are bad enough. The last thing we need in Tokyo is to throw Mexican drivers into the mix

[IparryU]

[quote="Samurai_Jerk"]Anyway, it's probably a good thing. Asian drivers are bad enough. The last thing we need in Tokyo is to throw Mexican drivers into the mix ]
ya... we sure the hell dont need a pickup truck with shit hanging out the back with 6 guys holding everything down...

not to mention making our own lanes and hitting the switches with our 10 inch datons and bumpin mariachi...

dont even bring up the drive-bys and jacking peoples cars, remodeling them, and then selling back to the same chump who got got...

we just wont go there...

[omae mona]

[xenomorph42]

[Samurai_Jerk]

My friend also got busted for driving without a license. In his case he was driving a large-sized bike but only had a license for a mid-sized bike. His fine was 1 million yen with a one year suspension.

If you have a valid license from another country that was good for at least three months before you came to Japan, do a gaimen kirikae. It's not that difficult or expensive. Just to be safe I took a three-hour course for people who already have a foreign license before I took the driving test. It cost me about 30,000 yen. I passed the test on the first try.

[6810]

\40.000 + \200.000

Given your bad driving and the expenses occurred above one can only assume that driving school would (have) be/been good for you, no?

[xenomorph42]

Given your bad driving and the expenses occurred above one can only assume that driving school would (have) be/been good for you, no?

Bit of clarification, my driving is very good, I was driving in Germany for 10 years, never a blemish on my driving record. Had a license since I was 16, drove in the states, L.A. and anyone that knows L.A., it ain't no joke. So no problem in the driving dept. but WHAT I DID in Japan was BAD, no question, but the system is really messed up, that's why I did what I did. And as for the driving school question, it didn't help me with anything I already knew. Well, there is one thing I learned and that is]NOT ALL[/I], but most driving instructors are assholes!

[xenomorph42]

My friend also got busted for driving without a license. In his case he was driving a large-sized bike but only had a license for a mid-sized bike. His fine was 1 million yen with a one year suspension.

If you have a valid license from another country that was good for at least three months before you came to Japan, do a gaimen kirikae. It's not that difficult or expensive. Just to be safe I took a three-hour course for people who already have a foreign license before I took the driving test. It cost me about 30,000 yen. I passed the test on the first try.

What can I say, you live and you learn. Boy, did I.....

[Greji]

ya... we sure the hell dont need a pickup truck with shit hanging out the back with 6 guys holding everything down...

not to mention making our own lanes and hitting the switches with our 10 inch datons and bumpin mariachi...

dont even bring up the drive-bys and jacking peoples cars, remodeling them, and then selling back to the same chump who got got...

we just wont go there...

Hey man, if ya can't hop your ride a foot off the road with one flick of the switch, you ain't got no ride anyway......