Among foreign residents in Japan, there are certain markers of prestige: permanent residency, N1 on the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test, double-glazed windows. But none seem to divide along the lines of the foreigner haves and have-nots so sharply and cleanly as a coveted Japanese driver’s license.
Casually drop “Can you drive in Japan?” at a gaijin gathering and people either nod in placid solidarity or look shattered. That’s because converting a valid driver’s license from another country to a Japanese one can be a surprisingly harrowing experience — but only for some.
Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) broadly divides drivers into two categories: those who can simply pay ¥4,000 (about $26) to translate their existing licenses and trade them for Japanese versions in one appointment, and those subject to a written test and a practical skills test atop a mountain of paperwork.
Drivers from South Korea? Go on in through door one. Maryland? Dōzō. China? NG. New Jersey? It’s door two for you.
According to the NPA, requirements may be relaxed for licenses from foreign places that are “recognized as having a licensing system of equivalent standards to Japan’s.” And in the U.S., the agency notes, exceptions may also be made where individual state policies have reciprocal rules — that is, if Japanese drivers are allowed to convert their licenses to local ones without any further tests, for example. But these decisions can feel frustratingly opaque.
On Oct. 1, citing a handful of high-profile car accidents caused by drivers from abroad, the police cracked down further on the rules: Tourists can no longer convert their licenses, and the written exam has been increased from 10 to 50 questions, with the passing threshold raised from 70% to 90%.
Exasperated comments flooded Slack channels, group chats and Reddit threads across the country in response. “How could they make this harder?”
We wanted to know: In a country where red tape is routine, why does this one procedure get people so fired up? So we asked Japan Times readers to share their experiences with us.
From Kyushu to Kanto, would-be drivers gave detailed anecdotes about their trials and tribulations, which in aggregate point to a system full of pain points exacerbated by a byzantine bureaucracy and seemingly arbitrary rules. In sharing their stories, we have used full names, first names or no names at all in accordance with individual respondents’ wishes.
For those unlucky drivers stuck battling this final boss of gaijin life, this one’s for you.
The reservation rat race
Going to your local driving center might seem like a simple task of Googling the nearest one, but oh, dear reader, it’s so much more than that.
Though the NPA sets the regulations for license conversions, the 47 prefectural police agencies each institute their own procedures for their driving centers. Some centers accept walk-ins during specified hours or on designated days of the week, while others require reservations by phone.
In the case of Tokyo’s driving centers, a prospective driver must navigate a set of websites so impressively vast and complex it makes applying for a Japanese credit card with a long middle name feel like a four-piece jigsaw puzzle. And that’s just in order to figure out which center you can book at.
“Prior to getting an appointment, I had made a hotel booking close to Komyoike so that I could camp out from 4 a.m. — the location is far from Namba and the trains don’t start early enough. All to be in the batch of the first five people.” — Aaron G., driver from Australia applying in Osaka
Prior to February 2024, appointments were first come, first served. But the online system comes with its own hurdles.
One driver from Singapore told us they’d been staying up until midnight in order to snag an appointment at the Samezu Driver’s License Center in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward — only to get booted out within seconds on each try. This is such a common experience that another respondent speculated third-party agencies are employing bots to book appointments.
The Fuchu Driver’s License Center in Tokyo is one of three such facilities where motorists of all stripes battle the bureaucracy for their right to the road.
| DICK THOMAS JOHNSON / VIA CREATIVE COMMONS
A 30-something driver with a license from Syria did not receive the midnight intel. They spent two months attempting to make reservations in the early morning hours, to no avail, eventually calling the driving center in Tokyo’s Fuchu suburb to inquire. “They told me to keep an eye on the booking site, but they didn’t tell me what day or time the booking opens,” they said. “I might have to watch the booking site for 24 hours straight.”
In Okayama Prefecture, Brandon Hansen, who has a license from Washington state, was told to call for a reservation in the first week of the following month, but all the slots were taken by the time he called — 15 minutes after opening.
Hansen enlisted his wife and dialed the center incessantly from both his and her phones starting at 10 a.m., when the license center opened. “I think I hit about 400 dials… and finally got in. Made the appointment.”
Paper trail pains
The list of required documents seems straightforward at first, but a small stipulation has become a bane for some license converters. The police require drivers to have spent at least 90 days in the country where they received their license — which sounds reasonable enough until it comes to proving it.
“I wake up every day from 7 to 10 a.m. and go to the booking site but I still can’t book. I contacted the Fuchu traffic department and they told me to keep an eye on the booking site but they didn’t tell me what day or time the booking opens. I might have to watch the booking site for 24 hours straight.” — driver from Syria applying in Tokyo
Drivers have been scrambling to prove their current licenses were given to them as teenagers. They go digging for old tax documents, original university diplomas, and write to old bosses asking for proof of employment.
Former Japan Times editor Dave Cortez found himself stuck in a paperwork morass. His home state of California doesn’t retain old driving records if it deems them “no longer necessary,” so despite holding a valid license since age 16, he hasn’t been able to produce a document showing when he first acquired it.
Instead, Cortez has gone so far as to file a request with the U.S. Department of Justice to obtain his own entry and exit dates into the U.S., under the Freedom of Information Act. He’s still waiting for the results, six months later.
“The day comes around and I use my phone and my wife’s phone, and as soon as 10 a.m. hits, call incessantly from both phones. I think I hit about 400 dials (about 200 from both phones) and finally got in. Made the appointment.” — Brandon Hansen, driver from U.S. (Washington) applying in Okayama
A driver in Saitama, on the other hand, was able to obtain the requisite documents from his home country, but described “quite an arduous process” of getting each one notarized and verified by the Bangladeshi Ministry of Home Affairs.
A driver from Australia had to make three trips to his Gifu Prefecture driving center due to rejected paperwork. Though he had a valid license, it didn’t say the date it was first issued, and though he had a letter with the issue date from the original county vehicle department, it didn’t have a stamp on it.
The waiting game
Once drivers have gotten themselves with the right stack of documents to the right cheerless building and at the right inconvenient time slot, there is the matter of waiting. Even with a reservation, a trip to the driving center can cost you at least half a workday, not including travel time.
Kyra Mercer, a 30-something driver from South Africa, waited four hours to have her documents approved and scanned in Chiba. “No air conditioning, no heating, queues everywhere, one place to get food, not enough seats, no clear process, you can’t hear any announcements because no loudspeaker is used,” she said. Once her documents were approved, she was able to make an appointment for a road test — in six months’ time.
When that day finally arrived, there was a second document check, which took an hour, then the written test, which took an hour, then finally the skills test. Drivers who passed waited another two hours for the remaining paperwork, she said.
Mercer started the process in November 2023 and finally succeeded 21 months later, in August of this year — longer than the current snail’s-paced processing time at Tokyo immigration for permanent residency applications. “It’s honestly the craziest process for a first-world country like Japan,” she said.
“The person at the desk made a big show of looking at every single stamp in my passport and recreating a timeline of my movements on a sheet of A4 paper, only for his colleague to tell him that it wasn’t required for my situation.” — driver from Australia applying in Tokyo
Hannah L., who managed to convert her Illinois license, said the Oita Prefecture driving center she went to only handed out successful licenses during a short period in the afternoon. “So even though I made an appointment for first thing in the morning, I had to wait three hours for them to print it out,” she said. “They told me I could leave and come back, but the center is in the mountains. Plus, most people come by bus, because they don’t have licenses. What a silly option.”
The theater of testing
It’s not surprising that the driving test is less a demonstration of one’s practical knowledge of operating a motor vehicle and more about going through the motions to satisfy an eagle-eyed instructor. Though it’s well known that not checking under the car before driving is an automatic ding, it’s still common for experienced drivers to stride confidently into their tests only to come out with heads hung.
“You literally failed if you didn’t say ‘yoshi’ (all right) when checking your mirrors and blind spots,” said Hannah L.
Freedom II A. said he was allowed three attempts — one per month — at converting his Philippines license in Konosu, Saitama Prefecture. Given the “costly and time-consuming” transit from his home, he studied blogs and YouTube for tips, even arriving early to walk the test course and memorize the route.
He failed his first attempt, saying he “mistakenly used the wipers instead of the turn signals — something I did twice out of habit from left-hand drive cars.” He failed his second. “I parked too close to the edge of the road.” After his third, he waited nearly two hours without knowing if he’d passed — until the staff finally called his name and gave him the good news.
Similarly it took Troy M., a driver from Oklahoma who also converted in Konosu, three attempts to pass the road test — and then another three tries to convert his motorcycle license. “Each failure taught me something new,” he said gamely.
Luck of the draw
Adding to the delights of long wait times and reservation systems are uneven treatment and pervasive bad vibes.
Hana L.-S., converting her license in Hyogo Prefecture, described the staff member who helped her as friendly. “(But) his coworker was treating the Southeast Asian person he was dealing with awfully, being very harsh and yelling at him in Japanese that he clearly didn’t understand,” she said. “It could just be a coincidence, but it is worth noting that myself and my friend are white(ish) Australian females, whereas the other guy was a Southeast Asian male, which could’ve contributed to the way he was being treated.”
It took a driver in his 40s four tries to successfully convert his Virginia license in Hiroshima.
“The police officer actually told me that ‘foreigners should not be driving in Japan,’” he said. “He was my instructor the first three times. I got lucky the fourth time and got a different instructor. The woman that took the driving test with me was on her 14th try. Another woman was on her ninth.”
“The test was less about your actual ability to drive and check safety, and more about memorizing the course and doing the course correctly. Oh, and saying ‘yoshi’ (all right) every time I had to check my mirrors and blind spots. You literally failed if you didn’t ‘yoshi!’ when checking your mirrors.” — Hannah L., driver from U.S. (Illinois) applying in Oita
Reading the results of The Japan Times reader survey, what’s striking is that for every horror story of hours — and tens of thousands of yen — lost, there is the opposite sort of anecdote. Indeed, the heart of the frustration of the license have-nots is the very fact of arbitrariness.
“I went to the Japan Automobile Federation and had my American license translated. Took a few minutes,” wrote Christopher Gulbraa, who converted a Utah license in Aichi. “Sailed right through,” said a German-license holder who converted in Sapporo. “First try and succeeded,” said an Indonesian driver who went to Fuchu in Tokyo.
Our colleague Sam Byford, a U.K. license holder, said his experience was a breeze. “It made me feel lucky I didn’t have the nightmare experience of most of my American friends. I thought it was a little silly that you have to pay for a professional translation of a completely standardized tiny card, but that’s about it.”
Kaitlyn C. followed all the rules and procedures, took a two-hour refresher course and passed the driving test on her first try. “Apparently, two months later Japan made an agreement with (my home state of) Colorado so that had I waited a few months, I wouldn’t have needed to go through most of this process. LOL.”
Ultimately our survey proved more cathartic than conclusive. For these two (still) driving-hopefuls, it’s clear there are no shortcuts. As with many bureaucratic predicaments in Japan, the only way out, it seems, is through.
AloJapan.com