Driver's Ed: Japan Style!

So you wanna drive around Japan, eh?

Maybe you watched Tokyo Drift one too many times and feel like you could take your souped-up Honda Civic going 100mph around a hairpin turn in Shibuya?

Well, if you want to drive in Japan, you’re gonna have to go to Japanese Driving School and get a Japanese license.

Unless you are from Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Taiwan or South Korea.

Sorry, American drivers, but our reputation precedes us.

This means there are two paths to getting your Japanese license -- The easy way (for everyone else) and the expensive, nearly impossible way (for Americans.)

As illustrated in this helpful flowchart:

So first, you head to the Japanese driving school and meet your instructor.

Then you sit in a room for hours trying to read and write the rules of the road, in JAPANESE.

Then it’s into the state-of-the-art simulator!

Then they finally let you onto the private course owned by the driving school. It’s time to drive very slowly, for hours and hours and hours; for which you pay am insane amount of money.

Typical Japanese Driving Course w/ Smooth Jazz Soundtrack

Then you wait.

You’ll receive a notice telling to come to the local DMV for your results. They’ll likely deny your application, so you get to try again, over and over, at your own cost, making you an old man on mandatory 6 months probation for aged drivers.

You’ll get to put this fancy schmancy sticker on your car showing that you are now over 70 years old and cannot be trusted behind the wheel.

But do not despair my fellow Americans! In Japan, there are ample trains to ride making it almost completely unnecessary to own a car in the first place.