I’m going to start a post that is mostly perplexed ‘what is wrong with this country?’ rants by saying the rainy season has its awesome points, like the light mist over the mountains, the angry sea, the solid sheet of rain, the crabs on the street or the fact that I don’t have to water my herbs.
Now onto the real point of this post- Japanese bureaucracy.
Today was phase two of operation make-a-Japanese-driver’s-license. Phase one was translate-my-Australian-license. This is pretty easy, especially coming from an English speaking country with relatively few states. Americans, on the other hand, have difficulties. The translation part isn’t too hard, but the test is the difficult, no, improbably impossible part. Now, here having an American colleague going through a far worse ordeal than me made me feel better. I just sit an interview where they ask when I got my license, and what kind of test I had to do, and then in a couple of weeks I make the three hour each way drive again to have my eyes tested (because they couldn’t possibly test my eyes while they have me there to do the interview, no, that’d just be too easy…), so they can mail me a license a week later. But no, Americans have the joy of sitting a Japanese Practical driving test. And here I use practical in the most loose sense possible- it is as far removed from any situation one would ever encounter, anytime while driving. Here’s a run down of the test:
- It’s on a closed course, with no other cars
- there’s one traffic light, but that doesn’t matter. It’s always red and just there for practice
- you’re expected to take the course fast, without thinking
- you’re not told what to do, you’re not told what you’re doing right and, if you fail, you’re not told what you’ve done wrong.
- there are three possible courses you can remember. You turn up an hour before your test and you’re told which course you’ll be doing, and you have that hour to commit the course to memory
- there is a section where, coming out of a turn, you have a space of about 30m to speed up to 45km/h, which in a manual involves over-revving the engine.
- the test is undertaken in huge black taxi-like Toyota Crown saloons, even though the emblem of Kochi is the tiny Kei-car, which everyone drives. They’re the tiny cars that Japan is famous for, which are really starting to make sense with petrol pushing ¥200/l
Yes, you’re expected to get behind the wheel of a car, no, practically a tank, that you’ve never driven (unless, like many people, you’ve failed the test many times) navigate an absurd course entirely by memory, and then somehow divine what it was you did wrong if you have to attempt it again.

And here is essentially what is wrong with Japanese education. An intricate system of silly hurdles to jump through, insane and inane tests based entirely on memorisation, with absolutely no practical application whatsoever. This is why Japanese drivers are so bad, they’re never actually taught how to drive. On a road. They learn how to follow a course.

And this is why I’m here, because it used to be the same with English education- kids could pass university entrance exams in English and not be able to communicate with an English speaker.

But anyway, I don’t have to sit the practical test. Thankfully.