Getting My Japanese Driver’s License, AKA Bureaucratic Hell Strikes Again

Being an expat, you have to go through a lot of paperwork, especially when you first arrive in your new country. Visa stuff, bank accounts, rental agreements, etc. etc. etc. A person doesn’t really get used to all the bureaucracy, but at least learns to tolerate it to some extent.

I’d like to tell you the tale of the fresh bureaucratic hell that was getting my Japanese driver’s license.

It all started back in July. Akira, after reading a news article, found a list of countries (and a couple of US states) that don’t require you to take either the written or practical driving exam in order to get a license, as long as you still hold a valid driver’s license from that place, of course. (You can find a list on your prefectural police department’s website—the list changes from time to time, so I won’t type it out here.) My home state was on that list, and my current license expires on my next birthday, so we knew we had to hurry up and get my license converted before it expires.

There’s plenty of paperwork you have to bring in, a list of which (at least for Kanagawa Prefecture residents) can be found in this English PDF from the Kanagawa Prefectural Police’s website. Those from other prefectures I’m sure will have a similar list, but do check your prefectural police website to be sure.

So I dutifully gathered almost all the required documents and got on the train for an hour out to Yokohama. The only thing I didn’t have was an official translation of my driver’s license, which had to be made at the Japan Automobile Federation (JAF), the closest of which was also in Yokohama. When I arrived at the driver’s license center, I checked with reception to ask where the foreign license exchange office was. After telling me, the receptionist asked if I had all my documents, and I told her I had everything but my translation.

Up until that point, I had been thinking (naively, I suppose) that JAF and the licensing center were one and the same. Nope, they are not.

The foreign license exchange office in Kanagawa only accepts applications for half an hour twice a day: 8:30-9:00 and 1:00-1:30. The receptionist told me to go upstairs and sign up for the 1:00 slot, then go to JAF, get my translation, and try to be back before that time. I had three hours to get this done. A quick check on my phone told me that it would take a 45-minute train ride one way to get to JAF. So I went upstairs, signed up for a 1:00pm slot, then booked it back to the train station. If there wasn’t a line at JAF and the translation didn’t take too long, I should be able to get back on time.

I was fortunate that there was only one other person at JAF waiting for a translation. It took only thirty minutes for them to finish with mine. I had to fill out an application form when I arrived and a confirmation form once the translation was given to me, which only took another five minutes or so apiece. No problem, if just slightly annoying.

I made my train transfers and got back to the license center literally just as the man at the counter was calling my name. Whew! He checked over all my documents, but paused on my residence certificate. (Different from my residence card.)

“This needs to have your nationality on it,” he said. He pointed to the part of the certificate that should indicate my home country, where it was blank.

I remembered reading that on the list, and I had gone to city hall just that morning to get a copy of my certificate. What I didn’t realize while I was there was that I had to opt in to including my nationality. I’d added my passport number and resident card number to the certificate just in case, so I had assumed that my nationality would be automatically included as well. Nope.

“You can get a copy at the ward office one train stop away,” the man told me. “If you can get it and come back by 3pm, we can still process your application.”

So off I went again, back to the train station and to the next stop. All the while thinking, “They have my passport, my resident card, and my driver’s licenses, all of which confirm my nationality. Do they REALLY need it on the resident certificate, too?” At this point, I was starting to feel pretty irritated, as you might have guessed.

There were tons of people at the ward office, so I ended up spending over an hour there, mostly just waiting for them to make my certificate. But I got it, and made it back to the licensing center just before 3pm.

And then came my final defeat.

“I see here you have an Intermediate Driver’s License,” the man said as he double-checked my paperwork.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “That’s the first type of license you get when you turn 16 in my state. It has some extra restrictions.”

“Right, right,” he agreed. “But in order to get this type of license, you need to have completed a driver’s education course and have a driving permit.”

“Right,” I said. “I took a class when I was 15 and I had the permit.”

“But the permit isn’t here.”

This is where the dread set in.

“Honestly, I don’t think I have it. I don’t know anybody who keeps it.” (Meanwhile, in my brain, I’m thinking ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?????)

“Well,” he said, “we have to have proof that you received your driver’s license in the correct way. I’m sorry for sending you all around the city today, but we can’t process your application.”

Oh, I was so frustrated. Furious, even. But I thanked him, gathered my papers, and left.

 

Fast-forward to a Monday in August. My mom had somehow managed to find my old driver’s permit in the depths of the house and had sent it to me. I had errands to run at the US Embassy in Tokyo, so I figured I’d drop by Yokohama on my way back and try this whole thing again.

The office was packed and they turned me away, telling me to come back the next day. UGH.

 

So let’s fast-forward one final time to October. The puppy was at the vet for her spay surgery, so I figured I’d use the empty house time to finally get my driver’s license sorted out. The Kanagawa foreign license exchange office does not accept appointments, so I left at 7am to guarantee I’d arrive by their first morning time of 8:30.

When I got to the third floor at 8:30 on the dot, though, all of the seats were filled already. The office only accepts twenty applications per day, so I thought I’d missed yet another opportunity. Still, the man at the counter had me write my name down on the list and told me to wait for a bit.

Evidently I’m not the only one who didn’t realize JAF was in a different location. He sent a couple of people away to go get translations. A couple of people, also like me, did not have their residence certificates properly filled out. There were a couple more still who did not have expired versions of either their driver’s licenses or their passports. One guy got turned away because his name was misspelled on one of his documents.

Finally, it was my turn, and he confirmed that all my paperwork was correct. “The ten slots for morning are filled, so please come back at 1:00pm,” he told me. So I wrote my name on the list (even after all the people he’d turned away, I was still number 6 for the afternoon slots), took my stuff, and wandered back to the train station. It was 9:30am, so most of the shops attached to the station weren’t open yet, but there was a Doutor Coffee open, so I ordered an iced chai tea and sat down with my book for an hour.

I spent the rest of my idle time wandering around the shops, then headed back to the license center.

This time, the man at the counter reconfirmed all of my documents, and then asked me a few questions about the type of car I wanted to drive. Apparently my American license would qualify me to drive anything up to a small bus, but the license in Japan allowing me to do that would be double the price of a regular license. I went for the regular one.

Once again, he asked me to wait and come back at 3:00pm for the next step. I went outside, found a bench, finished my book and started another in the two idle hours.

At 3, I was back in the office. He handed me an application form which was mostly filled out for me—I just had to supply my name in katakana and my address. I was also instructed to go to the cashier and pay for four stamps (a lot like the stamps you put on mail) totaling to the amount that was listed on the application. I would put two of the stamps on the application and keep the two others for a later step in the process. While doing that, I was also to go to an automated kiosk and make a PIN. The machine printed a slip with a barcode on it, which I would also need for a later step.

I brought all of this back to the application counter and then sat down to wait again. After a few more minutes, I was called up to fill a questionnaire. There were questions like, “Have you unexpectedly lost consciousness in the last six months?” and other safety-related questions of the sort. I filled the questionnaire twice, once in English and once in Japanese.

Then myself and three other people were called into another office to do an eye exam. The eye exam consisted of circles with little gaps in them. I had to tell the proctor which direction the gap was: up, down, left, or right. I performed the test without my glasses until I couldn’t even see there was a circle anymore, then put on my glasses to finish it. There was also a color distinguishing section to confirm that I could tell the difference between red, yellow, and blue. “You cannot drive without glasses,” the proctor told me, which I already knew since I’ve had that restriction ever since I began driving at 16.

Then there was more waiting, until 4:00pm this time. I didn’t even bother leaving the office and read my book while I waited.

At 4:00, a lady took the four of us out of the office, across the lobby, and down a hallway and instructed us to wait for our photos to be taken. We were all given little blue forms on which we pasted our other two revenue stamps and wrote our names. We ended up waiting another thirty minutes to get our pictures taken, handing the blue forms and our barcodes from before to the photographers.

“We should be able to finish your licenses by 5:30,” we were told.

More waiting.

Then, about thirty minutes later, the licenses arrived, and I got to bring mine home. GOOD GRIEF.

While sitting around at the equivalent of the DMV for an entire day is definitely not on my list of fun activities, it was worth the time I took to do it. I didn’t have to pass a written or driving exam (the latter of which I’ve heard is horrendously difficult), and I didn’t have to spend thousands of dollars on driving school.

Ultimately, it was a win. Realistically, I felt the paperwork hangover down to my bones.

But now I can drive, so… yay?

 

For those of you living in Kanagawa Prefecture who can convert your license without testing the same way I did, I have some tips for you. Hopefully these will help you have a smoother process than I did!

First, documents:

• A valid foreign driver’s license AND all expired licenses you’ve ever had. In lieu of the expired licenses, you can bring in an official driving record, which you should be able to order from the DOL in your home state/country. The driving record needs to cover everything back to your very first license.
• Your current passport AND all expired passports you’ve ever had. They want this so that they can confirm that you lived in the country where you were licensed for at least 3 months after licensing before coming to Japan. I heard that they will accept other documents such as lease agreements, but you’ll have to ask. And you need your passport regardless.
• Official translation of your foreign driver’s license. This can be obtained either at a JAF office, which they have all over the country, or at your country’s embassy/consulate. A personal translation will not work.
• Residence Certificate with your nationality on it. This is called your juminhyo in Japanese, and you have to go to your city/ward office to get a copy of it. They will not accept certificates issued by your place of work or any other place. When you fill out the form to have it issued at the city/ward office, don’t forget to check the box for nationality! This also must be issued within the last 6 months—they will not accept it if it’s too old, so go get a new one.
• Your resident card. Zairyu
• A 3 x 2.4cm photograph of yourself taken within the last 6 months. (This will be pasted on your application but won’t be the one they use for your actual license.) There is a photo booth in the licensing center if you need it.

 

General tips:

• Arrive early. I overheard one of the staff saying that people line up outside before 7a.m. There are no appointments, so if you need to get this done in one day, then get there early.
• Avoid going in on a Monday, a Friday, or the day after or before a holiday. Most of the people going to the licensing center are taking a day off work to do so, and it’s natural that they’d use that day to extend their weekend a bit. Those days are extra busy, so you don’t even want to bother.
• Be prepared to show proof of any potential discrepancies. For example, if your passport is in one name but your driver’s license is in another (such as if you got married), you’ll need to explain why and prove (such as with a marriage certificate, court order, whatever) that these are the same person. Similarly, go have any misspellings corrected before you go to the licensing center.
• Bring something to read and/or do. You’re gonna be there a while.
• Some of the people at the office speak English, but several don’t. If you’re uncomfortable with Japanese, have a Japanese-speaking friend go with you to the office—they don’t provide interpreters.

 

Have you ever gotten a foreign driver’s license? What was the process like?