The process, starting a month back, is a painful education in bureaucracy. The amount of paperwork and time involved is ludicrous, the process is clearly a deterrent to any gaijin with the temerity to want to legally drive on Japanese roads.
Firstly one has to have their original Singapore license officially translated by the officiously sounding Japanese Automobile Federation, this is done through the mail... snail mail and it takes about 2 weeks.
Translation in hand and with your passport, gaijin card, Singapore license, international license, you head down to the Shinagawa Driving centre. You head to counter 29 on the second floor and pick up a queue number, funnily enough this counter has the only English sign in the whole 4 storey building, it says: 'This is the busiest section in the whole building, be prepared to wait at least 2 hours'... I shit you not.
Finally when it's your turn, meekly walk up to the counter where an arrogant little bureaucrat will proceed to check if you have the right documents, the trick here is to try and look meek, not stupid... they hate stupid. More waiting, finally the arrogant little bureaucrat calls your name and tells you to go down to the first floor for an eye test, this takes another half hour as there are about 50 other people taking their eye test. Back up to counter 29, more waiting, then it's a touch screen road theory test (this part is surprisingly easy and you only need to get 7 out of 10 to pass).
After passing your road theory, head back down to the first floor to arrange a test date, which is usually 3 weeks from the day you book it... by now, I've spent 4 hours of my life trying to book a test date.
Fast forward 3 weeks to test day!
Waiting Room One.It's 8.20am, outside the testing area and there are about 60 people here for the test, a good mix of locals and gaijins. We are separated into groups of 15 and herded off to different waiting rooms. I'm in room One, with 2 Indians, 1 American, 2 Russians, 2 Chinese, 7 Japanese. In walks the tester, he runs through the test course and what not to do, even though he's speaking in Japanese, I manage to get the gist of his run through, he tries to crack a few bad jokes and I'm careful to laugh when the others laugh... so, I'm a suck-up, but you can tell, everyone is nervous.
The test car. When it comes to my turn, I'm a tester's wet dream, I'm checking my mirrors, I'm signalling in advance, I'm stopping before the white lines, I'm driving slower then an old lady with rickets. Anyway to cut a long story short, I pass my driving test, but 8 out of 15 from my group fail the course, surprisingly it's the 7 Japanese and 1 Chinaman. Not so surprising is the fact that the 7 Japanese were women... hey, I call it like I see it.
The course.By now it's 11 am, let's just say it takes another 2 hours and running around to 4 other sections within the Shinagawa Driving centre before we walk out with our brand spanking new licenses.
I took the rest of the day off as a little reward.
