Hello!! I was wondering if anyone has experience getting a license in Japan without having one in their home country? I’m assuming there would be drivers Ed courses, and I wonder what that would be like for someone who isn’t fluent in Japanese yet.
My placement doesn’t require me to drive and I know public transportation is fairly good, but I also know it would be very convenient to have a car to get around. I hope to be in Japan for a few years so I was just thinking about my options. Any help would be appreciated! 🙂
7 comments
I would try to get one before, it’s an expensive and long process to learn in Japan with specific driving schools generally having to be used.
Also, depending where you’re from you may be able to exchange your foreign licence for a Japanese licence without any extra tests when you get here.
[Google has told me this](https://cotoacademy.com/how-to-get-a-japan-driving-license-from-scratch-infographic-illustrated-guide/).
Having a car is extremely expensive in japan…toll
Roads, gas, no free parking, very costly maintenance every couple of years, expensive to get drivers license. Seems more like a hassle as a foreigner
I’m currently living this experience in Japan – I never had the need to drive before so I never learnt. Now I really wish I had because learning to drive here is extortionate. We’re talking Â¥360,000 for the full course, test included. That’s 1.5 month’s salary. By all means look into it, but be prepared to be shocked by the huge cost.
Of course, a lot depends on where you live. It sounds like you won’t need a car where you are going to be living. That said, being able to drive opens up a huge part of the country that is otherwise practically inaccessible. For example, it was great being able to fly to Okinawa and rent a car and drive around – it’s convenient and gives you access to places where public transport is lacking or limited.
If you can, I’d try getting a license in your home country as quickly as possible. Then, you can get an international driver’s license and drive for a year on that. That would give you time to see if you are able to take advantage of having a license and if you’re going to be in Japan long enough to get a Japanese license.
I did this! As in, learned how to drive, for the first time in my life…in a foreign country 😅 I went to a 2 week driving school camp in another prefecture. It cost me Â¥200,000. The textbooks and written tests were in English, but my driving tests and verbal instruction was all in Japanese. There are some schools that have English instruction but they often cost much more and may run longer than 14 days.
I did this back in summer 2020 and still haven’t made a video about it, otherwise I would have posted it here as a shameless plug😅 Till then, if you have any specific questions, feel free to DM me.
I wish I saw this post earlier. I’ll try give as much info as I can lol.
I had nothing either and did the whole thing here. Got it in 3 months. You don’t have to attend a driving school (自動車å¦æ ¡) to pass. It’s so overpriced and not mandatory. You can actually walk into the driving test center any day and try take the test.
What I would suggest you do instead is to do a certain amount of lessons with an instructor at a practice course (教習所). This is different to enrolling in a school. You just do enough lessons until you get comfortable and then go to the driving center and book the test yourself. There will be practice courses in your town or nearby you just go in and sign up. I paid about 90,000 in total for about 30-40ish lesson hours but you don’t even have to do that many. Your instructor will just tell you you’re ready and you go to the driving test center yourself and sign up. Your instructor also keeps this card and stamps every lesson hour you do. You can bring that when you do your test and they can see how much you’ve done. They will start from scratch with you literally how to turn the thing on and go forward haha.
You have to decide whether you wanna do an automatic AT licence or a manual MT licence. You can’t drive an MT with an AT licence. Same in other countries.
Provisional licence (learners permit for Americans?): you sit one theory test and one practical test usually morning and afternoon. Theory test is 50 T/F questions and you need to get around 45/50 to pass. You’ll get told soon after whether you passed or not and if you do you will go to their enclosed course for the practical in the afternoon. If you fail anything don’t worry just go to the desk and sign up for another date. I got the provisional after 2 tries but most of my coworkers were 5-7 times!? Once you get the provisional you can start practicing on the roads with your instructor.
Full licence: another theory test of 95 questions. Last 5 questions are illustrations of “whats the correct thing to do here?” and they’re each worth 2 points. You gotta get 95/100 to pass. Again if you pass that you head to the exam course to do the practical. But this time you’ll exit the course in the car and do your test on the road. You might also have to reverse into a spot or parallel park on the day but you’ll be taught out to do that beforehand.
Once you pass that you’re done and you’ll get a pic taken on the day. I look like shit in mine haha.
You can buy the theory book in English and you can ask to do the theory tests in English. Amazon also has some practice papers.
I wouldn’t worry too much about Japanese level. The language wasn’t actually that complicated and there was a lot of pointing and gesturing. I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that. What I would do though is have someone to come with you to the test center to sign up. There’s so many annoying forms and different windows to go to. At least in my prefecture.
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TLDR don’t blow all your money on driving school.