Japanese Licence Transfer

8 comments

1. I kept mine. YMMV

2. It’s not citizenship, you keep it.

3. I suppose it depends on your country, but I’ve never heard of any country that doesn’t allow people to hold licenses from two countries.

4. You don’t lose your original license, but if you are from the states (Cali in my case), I still needed to renew the license by mail. That being said, since you didn’t specifically mention having to take the physical driving test, guessing you are from a country that doesn’t require that and not from the US? Still best to identify the process to renew your license back home.

5. Dude… hope you are trolling 😂😂

6. [deleted]

7. For the UK you can keep it but for renewal of picture card every 10 years, legally, you’re supposed to be resident there.

8. As other people said, I think it depends on the country. I talked about this with a guy at the Swedish government body that handles licenses last month. If I remember correctly, he said that handing in your original license is the norm, but Japan and the US didn’t enforce this previously. Apparently this changed a couple of years ago (for Japan at least) and now you are unable to keep you old license.

   In my case, when transferring my Swedish license twenty-some years ago here in Japan I was asked to hand over my Swedish license, but I just told the guy that I’d like to keep it and he let me. I was able to renew my Swedish license once during a trip home ten years ago, but was rejected this year.