A.k.a the day spent on the renewal of a Japanese driver's license. Quite a bit less hectic than the saga from a year ago, but to satisfy the completionistic urges, here's the summary of this too.
The initial green-colour JP licence (proper one, not the beginner one, haven't ever seen one of those) is valid for one year. Mind you, they calculate this based not on the examination or licence issuance date, but one's birthday + 1 month. So I suppose this "year" may actually turn out to be almost two, if you are (un)lucky? For example, I passed the examinations in September 2020, but since the birthday is in January, their "one year" mark arrived in February 2022.
In any case, 2 months before that expiration deadline the authorities send you a physical snailmail postcard (fully in unreadable kanji, of course) sort of informing you of the time-place-necessary documents to renew the licence. They do this (and only this, no digital reminders... what is this 2023??) every time your licence expires, so if you haven't remembered to specifically change your postal address in a high enough level of (... seriously, the way everything here has levels... no wonder this much of the population is addicted to computer games) police station after moving, tough luck and bye-bye licence.
What level of institution exactly you need to go, when, what documents you need to bring and how many hours of total pointlessness it takes, depends on your licence level and past "conduct in traffic". Unless you have screwed up within the year (gotten into an accident or something and have penalty points on the licence), you'll next be given a 3-year blue-colour licence. (After that is 5 years and gold, I think, but got to wait for that one for a loooong while yet.)
As a result of cunning life planning (ha ha ha), one of the eligible (for this level of licence change + accepts foreigners) licence centres is 15 minutes from home by bike. Heck yeahhh. Well, not counting the extra 10 minutes I spent trying to find the correct building in the shown area, legal bike parking and a non-employees-only entrance. But what is more, after deciphering the diagrams on the aforementioned postcard I even managed to arrive on a correct day (Mon to Fri) and time slot (8.30 to 14.00) within the allocated 2 months and almost with the necessary items (old licence, the postcard, proof of still living in Japan, photo).
Have to own up, though, that I did completely ignore the curious probably Covid-related tent-labyrinth at the entrance, because it didn't Exactly block the door, and the only thing I could understand was the word PCR on some flags. Noone bothered to stop me, though, so if there actually were some testing requirements or temperature check or sth to enter the building, whoops.
Followed an hour or so of Incredibly Smooth Sailing - just presented the postcard to a uniform near the door, who pointed to the first queue (gotta love this word), from where I got some paper to fill out my name and contact info and a disclaimer to sign saying I have no habit of fainting at random times (the whole day this was the only thing with an English translation attached, btw). Next was sent to another counter to do I-forgot-what, from where followed taped-onto-the-linoleum arrows of one colour to the next, probably to pay a fee, some machines to create a password, after that other coloured arrows to check eyesight.
Intermission: I seriously thought they were pulling my leg there when on the chart of about 10 lines of different sizes they asked me to point out the openings of the two largest characters for one eye and a single character for the other. I was still waiting for the actual test to start, when they waved me away... I mean, the bottommost smallest characters were also plain as day to me, but seriously, it is sort of a scary thought that there are people in control of lethal metal tubes all around us every day who potentially only see the top row...
More counters I think, quite fast processing, helpful and friendly people and not too much of a wait in any, until.. the photo checking counter. Wuooooooh, but the dude was nasty. Starting from refusing to slow down or simplify speech even after I had told him several times that I just don't understand what he is saying. Proceeding to complain about the photo I had meticulously cut to the specified size and brought along in hopes of speeding up the process. (Every f'ing document in this country has different size requirements for photos, each batch costs about 1000 yen and gives you 6+ photos, all except one of which just rot in the bookshelf for all eternity thereafter, because the photos must be proveably taken within the past 3 or sometimes 6 months). Apparently my head filled too much of the frame, and since it hadn't been taken in the booth in the next room (and paid extra for, I have to mark), he was adamant that it was scratched (which it wasn't, unless he scratched it himself by poking at it with a jeweller's lens for several minutes), and that since it would be re-photographed to turn it into a digital image for the licence, it would not look correct (which also turned out to be false information). As a huuuge service to me, just this time, after giving me a lecture, just this time, you know, for once, only this time, and swear on my mother to never do this again, just this time!!!, he agreed to accept it, though.
And then balanced it out with some near-shouting at me to take some documents out of the folder and why am I taking these other things out. Of course I had, and still have, no idea what the word he was using meant, and the folder was right there in front of him on the countertop, everyone else in the building so far had somehow managed to take what they needed from between the plastic covers... Then a half-hour wait and the most confusing instructions of the day yet, but as much as I gathered, the photo got put between a new plastic folder and I was under no circumstances allowed to take it out again - because scratches.
Next counter. And the lady takes the paper slip that now has my super-controversial photo attached, folds it in half to tear off a piece and presses a nice greasy thumbprint directly onto my face. Well, I guess I should be happy it was only fingergrease since she was also handling an A3 size tray full of multi-coloured stamps (the carved wooden sort that you press onto an inkpad to stamp documents) with excess ink all about. (Oh yeah, throughout the day my paper slip did accumulate various stamps for completing certain procedures, sort of like a boring version of the kids fairground stamp-collecting adventures they like here... Holy hell and I just realised why that thing exists in the first place, got to mold the kids into boxes early... cue song.)
More arrows and counters and stamps and different paper slips and I end up in a large hall full of schooldesks and people for two hours of... re-reading the last-but-one book in the Narnia series to somehow avoid falling asleep. (In hindsight, maybe should have selected something spicier to read, haha.) Technically the thing was supposed to be a traffic safety lecture, but if the only thing you hear/understand is 5 minutes of videos of accidents in the very end... yeah. Was given booklets with some statistics, was also supposed to go through a self-check questionnaire, probably also got told what to do next before receiving the licence, but what was actually said, well, your guess is as good as mine at this point.
Having not eaten since early morning was not helpful with the must-not-sleep effort either. (Not that quite a few other people, who by the looks of them, did, in fact, understand Japanese, didn't just pass out on the spot.) Oh, and did I mention that the postcard required one to book 2 hrs for the renewal procedures? Well, turns out that was just the duration of the necessary-for-this-level-of-licence "lecture", and didn't include any of the actual counters and documentation and checks and waiting. (The blue level lecture may, or may not, be shorter.) But having seemingly finally internalised how things usually go with Japanese admin, I had grabbed four bananas and a bottle of water on the way out, which I proceeded to basically swallow whole (yes, all four - so freakin' hungry all the time with these dietary restrictions I don't even... of course, even if there is a conbini or a cafe of a drinks machine in any of the public places, there is usually zero things I am allowed to eat from there) during the 5 minute break in my reading session, oh, sorry, the safety instructions.
For a fun interlude I did also have to lift some dude out of my designated seat after the banana-break. Was either high or just very-very-very confused judging by the fact that he next proceeded to try to sit in a forbidden seat (covid restrictions), then when shooed from there went and sat in the kept-empty-for-use-of-lecturer front row seat, from where the lecturer discovered him, not when restarting the lecture, not during the lecture, but when going around stamping the "lecture-complete" marks on everyone's slips at the end, which also illustrates quite clearly how much the lecturer cared about the task at hand, I suppose. At that point it turned out that the dude, as everyone could have guessed, was not supposed to be in this room/lecture/building in the first place.
Anyway, since the "instructions" of what to do next were completely lost in the rest of the "lecture", I figured just following the lines of people flowing out of different rooms down the stairs and lining up with people waving around slips with the same coloured and shaped (only blue circles, not the green rectangles nor both at the same time) stamps as me would do the trick. Got lucky with that, found the correct number (out of many) on my paper to respond to when called and received the licence.
And no further instructions. Which still haunts me two weeks later, since there were also a number of people (but quite few compared to the general crowd) lining up at yet different machines outside of the licence-issuance room, doing who knows what. Some check? Somethingsomething certificates? Changing of the random password created earlier? Activating something? Oh well, guess I'll worry about this whenever any problems arise, will just have to try to not be stopped by police within the next 3 years I suppose. Until then, second level of Japanese driver's licence achieved.
TLDR: takes no less than half a day; take photo on site; most people are nice; bring food, drink and a book; the rest is piece of cake. (Oh sh*t, how I want cake right now!!)
Cheers,
Hedi
