Just after landing face-first in Oita I procured, thanks to AAA, one of their international driving permits that are so handy and broken. Convenient as it may be, really, what's the logic in handing US nationals a piece of paper that says in essence "Sure, you may never have so much as taken a cursory glance at the roads and driving habits of our country, but here's your license, here's a car, have a ball"? Certainly one of the dark benefits of aggressive US foreign policy.
Ugh, don't remind me...
Anyways, that permit is only good for one year after entering the country (not when you receive the permit, a key point) and can only be renewed after being absent from that particular country for six months. Well, wasn't planning on bugging out for six months to, I don't know, live as a migrant boar hunter on Borneo, so I had to get a Japanese license. Step one was to translate my old license at an exorbitant cost by the Japan Auto Federation. Just glancing at the form afterwards and how the man--who couldn't speak English--just lifted info from my CA license and wrote it into the appropriate fields made me feel like I'd really spent 6000 J-bucks wisely. After that it's a simple matter of filling out paperwork, paying more money, waiting in lines, paying yet more money and waiting in more lines. These people make the DMV look like the model of streamlined efficiency.
The test is conducted on a circuit at the license center about the size of two football fields and includes a bevy of cranks, S-curves, road obstructions, a couple stoplights, blind road entryways, etc. Basically everything short of children playing in the streets. It's a good thing too, because I would have run them down out of rage. Before the test though, I ponied up another 6000 J-bucks to run a 45-minute practice session at the Kusu Driving Center, a pale shadow of the prefectural course I'd actually be tested on. In retrospect I'm glad I did it as it taught me the fundamentals of how to take a Japanese driving test. And in the end that is indeed all one is doing--learning how to take this test.
The test for a Japanese license involves no actual driving skill or experience on the part of the taker. Two very shocking examples occur to me off the top of my head. The first is that my instructor told me that the even if I stalled out the manual transmission car I was driving on the course (you have to take respective MT/AT tests if you want to drive that particular transmission type) it wouldn't count against me as the test is not about being able to shift or anything relating to operation of the vehicle's functions. OK... Next was one of my partners in testing, a Chinese student named Kaku who was taking this test for the fifth time on the day I passed. I asked Kaku if I could see his Chinese license as I'd never seen one in person or even online, but he responded with "I don't have one." "How are you able to take this test then if you haven't driven before?" I asked, forgetting or not really believing my own line about needing no actual skill or experience to do this. "This is my first time driving" he said. You have got to be shitting me. I probed him about this with follow up questions and, indeed, he has never driven a car in China or Japan. I repeat, HE HAS NEVER DRIVEN A CAR BEFORE! He passed that day and is now prowling the streets and highways of Oita.
So you might be thinking the test is a pushover if people that haven't been behind the wheel can pass it. No, it's not that simple. Like I said above, the test is about knowing how to take a test, not how to drive. Each time you turn you must check your mirrors and yell out "yosh!" each time. There are different mirror checks for different turns and road situations. Intersections require two checks, left turns three, pulling into traffic from blind corners takes four. If one is makine a right turn the right side of the lane must be favored, but not too close or too far--exactly one meter will do. When making a low-speed left turn one must just narrowly avoid clipping the curb. Too wide and points are deducted. Hit any of the poles on the crank curve (a curve type that never, ever occurs in real life) and it's an automatic failure. Miss a check and it's another automatic failure. Don't favor one side of the lane or the other as the situation dictates...well, you get the trend.
It's a ridiculous farce of a driving test. No parking section, no road test out there on public streets, even the road obstruction section was removed for this. Can you follow instructions? Can you jump through just enough flaming hoops to appease the overlord. It's kinda hard when the overlord changes three times on three tests, each one looking for something different. Overlord the First wanted flawless checks, Overlord the Second wanted proper lane positioning down to the centimeter. Overlord the Third, most spiteful and hated of all overlords, actually shirked some of the normal rules of the test and included his own, such as extra checks (a five-point check when pulling into traffic from a dead stop!). After I was done he then told me to wait in the lobby while he did two other tests. Really, Overlord the Third, could you not have told me in the car like the others whether or not I'd passed? Did you really have to tack on thirty minutes to my time in that godforsaken purgatory?
Welcome to Hell. Please take a number and join the queue.
Oh, and the driving center...haven't even started in on that yet. The place is brand new, no more than a couple years old, and must have been designed by an airport architect. That there was no baggage claim threw me for a loop (I think Maia was looking for it too when I took her along). Cavernous, with vaulted cielings, a good twenty-five meter wall of staff/teller desks and a glass facade, the AC must have drawn a fortune in current from the grid and the place still never got cool. It never could. Each test attempt costs around 5000 J-bucks though and I've heard tales of people taking it up to ten or eleven times, so it's not like the place is hurting for funds. Like a CHP speeding ticket this place is Japan's preferred method of highway robbery.
Crudely drawn comics borne of frustration! Zing!
But I got my license, so hooray.
Now, if you'll excuse me, my friend Mr. Cinder Block has a date with Ms. Glass Facade.
--Matt
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