Driver’s Test, Take One

Sorry, the title’s kind of a giveaway, isn’t it? To everyone’s surprise, I did not pass the Japanese driver’s license test the first time around.

Everything prior to the test went according to plan. This past Sunday a coworker and her husband drove me up to Kochi so I could practice on the driving course (you’re only allowed to practice with someone who’s held a Japanese license at least three years). This was, of course, an extremely nice thing of them to do. Since I had no classes scheduled for Monday, I was able to spend the night in Kochi and take the driver’s test the following day. Luckily I was able to book an inn of sorts located immediately beside the licensing center.

Let’s rewind and talk about practicing on the course. When I showed up to practice, I was given three different maps labeled A, B, and C, respectively. The fun thing about the Japanese driver’s test is that the proctors don’t actually tell you where to go or what to do. An hour before the test they announce whether you’ll be driving route A, B, or C, and then you just have to go through the whole thing by memory. Which means that you should have all three routes pretty well memorized beforehand.

Practicing on the course is not free, I discovered. In fact, a half hour time slot costs more than $35. The routes are not short—each takes at least fifteen minutes to drive—and there are three of them. So I ended up paying roughly $70 just so I could practice on the course for an hour and have enough time to drive each route once. Unfortunately driving the routes while my coworker read the maps and told me which way to go didn’t seem to help me memorize any of them. I resolved to study the maps thoroughly before I went to bed.

My coworker dropped me off at my hotel shortly before dinnertime and returned to Tosashimizu. This is where things started to get fun. The hotel, while conveniently located, turned out to be run by this elderly couple who had apparently not had a lodger in several months, perhaps years. I met the old man first; before showing me my room, he sat me down in the lobby and told me all sorts of advice about the test. All sorts. For, like, an hour. This guy had seen a lot of people come through to take the test over the years, and he was very determined to impart every bit of information he had ever gathered about it. At this point I was pretty tired and hungry, and I wanted to go to my room, but the guy was nice and I appreciated his tips. Then he took me on an extended tour of the entire building, which must have lasted another half hour. This was all in Japanese, mind you, and while my Japanese is improving, I am still very far from fluent; he made some cryptic comments about how there were certain doors I should never use, and other doors I should only use at certain times, which I totally failed to comprehend. Finally, he led me to my room. At last, I could settle in and study those maps . . . or not, because he then insisted that I immediately go out and eat dinner, so that I could return and walk the driving course with him before nightfall. He gave me directions to a nearby convenience store, and I went to buy food.

When I got back, the front door was locked. I went around to the back door, which he’d shown me during the grand tour of the place. I couldn’t remember if it was one of the doors I should never use, or one of the doors I could sometimes use, but it was also locked so none of that really mattered. I went back around to the front and found a doorbell. I pressed it and waited a few minutes. Nothing happened. I pressed it again and waited a few more minutes. Nothing. I decided to camp out by the door, ringing the doorbell intermittently. After waiting about fifteen minutes, someone finally came to the door—the guy’s wife. She apologized profusely, led me back to my room, and told me she was making sashimi (which, in hindsight, is maybe why she took so long to come to the door). She really wanted me to try some of this sashimi. She came back a few minutes later with a tray full of raw fish for me. I thanked her, and prepared to dig in. Aw yeah, time to enjoy a meal by myself, alone, in my room, without company, in peaceful solitude . . . except, the old lady remained in the room, and started fiddling with the air conditioner. She fiddled with the remote control for about ten minutes trying to get the thing to start, gave up, and called me over. “I don’t have my glasses, I can’t read this thing! What does it say?” she asked.

“It’s in Japanese,” I replied. She went to retrieve her glasses. She also retrieved her husband, and for the next several minutes both of them occupied my room, taking turns fiddling with the air conditioner. They actually got the air conditioner to work once, and then accidentally made it stop, and then had to figure out how to make it start all over again.

They did eventually leave, and I ate. By this time it was already getting pretty dark; I immediately began to search the building for the guy so we could walk the course together. I followed the faint sounds of a television program to a mysterious door at the back of the inn, which, ominously, had not been part of the grand tour. Through the door I could hear the old couple chatting away over the television set. I called out. “Um, excuse me?” No response. I called three times, progressively louder each time. I wondered if maybe both of them were deaf, and they were just really good at reading lips.

I decided to go use the bathroom and come back in a few minutes to see if either had stirred. I found a bathroom nearby that appeared well-maintained; I used it and the toilet promptly flooded. I found the mystery door again and worked up the courage to knock, which finally got their attention. I informed them of the bathroom issue, and asked the guy if he would still like to walk the course, despite the fact that it was now quite dark outside.

So we walked the course, or rather, we walked the A route; walking all three routes would have taken forever. Unfortunately it was so dark that I probably didn’t get much out of the experience; I certainly didn’t feel any more memorized after than before. As soon as we returned, I got down to the real work of studying the maps and retracing the routes mentally.

The day of the test was probably less exciting than the day that preceded it. I showed up, signed in, met the one other foreign guy taking the test with me. We took an eye est and then a brief written test, which I passed. We drew straws to determine order; I drew first. Right before our one hour lunch break, we were told we would be driving course B. Now, you are actually allowed to walk the course during your lunch break, but here’s the thing—it’s your lunch break. There aren’t really any places to get food in the immediate area, either, so if you want to eat and walk the course, you really have to eat fast. Luckily the other guy taking the test had a car, so we were able to drive somewhere to eat and still had twenty-ish minutes to walk.

The test is kind of insane. Not only are the routes long and convoluted (and therefore hard to memorize), the proctors are notoriously strict, and there are very specific rules you are supposed to follow that don’t really have much application in real life driving situations. The proctor will get into the car first, for example, and then tell you it’s okay to follow. You must walk around to the front of the car, look beneath the car to make sure nothing is obstructing the wheels, walk around to the back of the car (on the left, so you’re staying out of “traffic”), do another wheel check, look both ways before stepping into the street, walk to your door, check both ways before opening the door, crack the door, check both ways again, and finally enter the vehicle (of course, there are no other cars around so all this checking is strictly for show). Once you are in the vehicle, you must immediately check that the parking brake is in place, before checking a long list of other things. The parking brake is the very last thing to be released before you start driving, and when you finish, you have to engage the parking brake before you do anything else. When stopping at stop signs, you must come to a full stop for at least three seconds. As a JET, I was given a manual of things to remember when taking the driver’s test; it’s easily more than a hundred pages long.

The surprising thing is, I did really well on the test. So well, in fact, that I was pretty convinced I was going to pass. Only one mistake stuck out to me: at one turn, I had forgotten to blinker thirty meters beforehand. I certainly hadn’t gone off the road or forgotten the course or anything like that.

After you finish the proctor is supposed to give you one piece of advice. Even if you do a bazillion things wrong, apparently they will only tell you one of those things. My piece of advice was: “When making left turns, make sure to always check your blind spot for bikes and motorcycles.” Upon receiving this advice, I thought: “Holy crap! That’s the worst they’ve got on me? I’m so going to pass!”

Well, we all know how this turns out. I’ve heard from many people that it’s impossible to pass the test the first time around, that the proctors aren’t really concerned with how well you do, they just want to instill the idea that the test is Serious Business and not just anyone can pass. Well, they’ve convinced me. This test is totally Serious Business.

The good news is that subsequent attempts to take the test should be much simpler. Now that I have a good feel for the course, I shouldn’t need to funnel any more cash into practice sessions, which means I can go up to Kochi solo. I also don’t need to take the written test again. So now I just wait for a day when I don’t have classes scheduled, take the morning train up to Kochi, take the test, and I should be able to return that afternoon. A day trip I will hopefully not have to make too many times in the near future.