Deciding

I have an American driver’s license but it’s really just a piece of paper that says nothing about my actual ability to drive. Since getting the license I have driven maybe a couple times a year and in my opinion with significant risk to myself and others around me. There is a Japanese expression for people me: “paper driver,” and my “paper” is like single ply toilet paper.

After moving to Japan I had a few choices to consider for obtaining a Japanese driver’s license:

  1. Convert the USA license to a Japanese one.
  2. Skip driving school and just take a driving test in Japan.
  3. Go to driving school and then take a driving test in Japan.

Since my license is from California, #1 is currently impossible. Only licenses from certain states can be converted directly. It’s not clear to me why whether only some states and not others qualify for conversion.

As for #2, and especially in retrospect after having attended a Japanese driving school for a while, there was no way I was going to pass the test. Which means that the only ethical and reasonable choice available from the beginning was #3. This is what led to me signing up for driving school in Japan.

The Japanese government officially recognizes certain schools as being legally able to educate people and dispense valid driver’s licenses. After a bit of Googling I was lucky enough to be able to find one of these close to where I live. I made appointment to complete all the paperwork for entering the school.

Signing up

When I got there it was around 6PM and there were a line of people ahead of me doing the same thing as me. It turns out that I decided to join driving school around the same time when college students tend to be on vacation. After an hour or so it was my turn. I was given an explanation of how the school works, the number of lectures, driving practice sessions, the tests, and even the procedures for how to reserve a car for a practice session. My guess is that this is a very intentional effort to make sure that students learn the school’s process very very well, as I found later that instructors would constantly re-explain these procedures.

The friendly office worker who was giving me this explanation, suddenly in the middle of it said that he “needed to get some extra paper work” after which he handed me a survey asking me about my motivations for entering driving school and to write a sentence or two explaining why. I’m quite certain this was the initial filter on Japanese ability. In my opinion this filter is insufficient, but surely there are other filters as well.

After all the initial explanation I made the initial payment of around $2000 (at ~150 Yen/USD rate) which includes initial course and exam fees, and textbooks. I would estimate the final cost to be closer to around $4000. By this point I had also scheduled the “entrance ceremony” which would be about a month down the line due to the number of college students who had signed up ahead of me. As you can tell by this point, driving school in Japan is no joke.

Process

My school divides the entire learning process into two stages. The first stage consists of 10 lectures, 10+ practice sessions, a written exam and a practical exam. If I pass the first stage I will move on to the second stage where practice sessions will be conducted on real roads rather than on school premises. If I pass the written and practical exams for the second stage, I will finally get a license. The entire process needs to be completed within 9 months, or my course progress will be completely reset. That’s 50+ hours split across 9 months, or 1.4 hours a week at a minimum. This has been not hard to achieve as I have been able to schedule my driving school sessions in multiple-hour-batches when I have free days.

Language requirements

My biggest anxiety about signing up for driving school was my Japanese ability. I would be an environment intended mostly for Japanese natives. At my current level, Japanese requires much more focus than English. Would I be able to keep up? To be honest, this is not something I could really know until a few sessions in, which is unfortunate because by that time I had already paid a bunch of money. But after having done most of the first stage I think I can paint a reasonable picture of the Japanese level that’s required. Skills in order of importance are:

  1. Listening: 95% of time spent in driving school has involved an instructor explaining something to me. Some instructors are easier to understand than others. If you are able to be understand most mainstream Japanese YouTube videos then you’re probably fine..
  2. Speaking: for questions and conversation during practice sessions.
  3. Reading: for following lectures with the textbook and to take tests.
  4. Writing: to write basic info during situations that require it

Impressions

On top of having very little practical driving experience, I had no formal education in the USA and so I have had to fill in gaps on all basic driving skills (it was a minor miracle I got a license in the first place). The instructors have in general been very strict but given the sheer amount of repetition, nothing has felt out of reach to learn.

Starting driving school was probably the most stressful thing I have done since coming to Japan. However it only took two months to get this far. I will take the written and practical tests for the first stage soon, and if all goes well I’ll have my license in another few months. I am looking forward to the day that I finally graduate from “paper driver.”