Converting Washington Drivers License with motorcycle endorsement

Hello, I’m getting everything together to hopefully get my license converted but I have a couple questions.

So I’ve got my driving record from WADOL, along with some other documents I was able to coax out of them that state the exact date my motorcycle endorsement was issued since the original date isn’t explicitly stated on the driving record, just says issued with the same day my current license (replacement) was issued. I’ve also got my passport, my license, my translation from JAF, 住民票, and some utility bills (hopefully proof of duration of stay in WA, even though I’ve lived there my entire life before coming to Tokyo). I should also note I’m over the age of 21 and had my license since I was 16 which appears to matter for some licenses.

For the motorcycle endorsement, I’ve had it since 2016 and WA (or the rest of the US for that matter) doesn’t have a different license for any size of motorcycle. I’ve owned and ridden motorcycles as big as 1300cc before. Will I be able to turn this into a large motorcycle endorsement on the JDL? My translation states “L-自動二輪” for it which makes me think that L stands for large?

Given my age and how long I’ve had my license, does this entitle me to drive “Large Vehicles” with my normal license?

For most of my time driving, I’ve driven manual transmission cars. Again WA licenses allow you to drive both and don’t state this anywhere on the license. When I get to the office to go through the process, how do I make sure I can get this converted to an MT license?

Lastly I’m trying to figure out how to properly fill out the [Duration of Stay in Driver’s License Issuing Country](https://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/multilingual/english/traffic_safety/drivers_licenses/index.files/english.pdf) document. Given I never traveled internationally before now, the only stamp in my passport is my arrival here in March. When I get down to filling out date of entry, date of exit, passport page, etc. I don’t really have a passport page for date of entry since that’s my birth, do I just say page 2 (ID page) lol?

Anyway, thank you for reading this giant page of text, any help is appreciated.

1 comment
  1. I’m also curious about this. I had a normal license transferred. I have a motorcycle endorsement too but since I was just concentrating on getting the car license, I didn’t worry about it at that time. I’d be nice to have the motorcycle license now too. As for the manual vs automatic transmission, I think I remember somebody saying you have to specifically take a test on a manual car to get that manual license otherwise you’ll just get automatic. Most cars are automatic in Japan anyways

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