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Note.. I’m writing this for the interest of friends and family who are curious about how stuff works in Japan, but also in the hopes of helping people out if they are searching for info about motorcycle licensing in Japan…

Almost 3 years ago, when I converted my Canadian driving license to a Japanese one, I was told that if I wanted to convert my Motorcycle endorsement at the same time, it would take longer and cost more cash. “Nah, don’t bother. When am I ever going to ride a motorcycle?”

Well, I suppose I should never say never. About a year and a half ago, I bought a little auto-shift scooter for zipping around Tokyo (legal on a car license), and when it went to the big bike yard in the sky, I bought a manual-shift moped to replace it. Between the two bikes, I have done over 13,000km in and around Tokyo, but I realized that I would like a bit more. After all, it would be nice to strap a tent, sleeping bag, and chair to the back of a bike, leave Tokyo on a sunny Friday afternoon, and just see where the weekend takes me. This would be.. well, problematic at best on my 50cc bike, so it was time to investigate getting licensed for a bigger bike.

License Categories
Japanese motorcycle licenses are divided into 4 categories:

• Moped (Gentsuki): Up to 50cc. Separate license or included in a car license. Speed limit 30 km/h, must stay in left-most lane, can not do a direct right turn at many intersections.
• Small Bike (Kogata): Up to 125cc. Speed limit 50 km/h.
• Medium Bike (Futsuu, formerly Chuugata): Up to 400cc. Up to 250cc does not require yearly inspections.
• Large Bike (Oogata): Anything over 400cc.

I decided to go for the Chuugata license.. Those bikes are big enough to get me out of the city, without being so big as to be prohibitively expensive to buy or operate. Not only that, but the exam is not nearly as rigorous as the Oogata exam.

Contents of the Exam
To use a martial arts analogy, the test has both kata (how you drive in general) and waza (specific techniques that you must demonstrate). For the mid-size bike test, the techniques are as follows:

• Balance Beam (Ipponbashi): A balance beam 15 meters long and 20 centimeters wide. You must stop less than 2 meters before getting on the balance beam (so you can’t take a run at it) and you must take more than 7 seconds to cross it (so you can’t just speed across). Falling off or putting your feet down fails the test.
• Slalom: 5 cones spaced 3 meters apart. Slalom through them in under 8 seconds. Touching a cone fails the test.
• Crank Course: Two sharp left turns followed by two sharp right turns. Touching a pylon fails the test.
• S-Curve: Left turn, right curve, left curve, left turn. Touching a pylon fails the test.
• Emergency Stop: Stop from 45 km/h (by law only 40 km/h but the way the test is set up necessitates 45 or even 50).
• Uphill Start: An uphill start on a 10-degree slope. This doesn’t sound like much but that bike feels really heavy.

As for the driving part, it’s just regular driving around their track, set up so they can see you change lanes, turn right and left, use a traffic light and stop signs, etc.

The procedure at Fuchuu
I went to Fuchu Driving License Test Centre.. The other choice for Tokyo residents is Samezu (near Shinagawa). Fuchu is more convenient to my apartment and my office so I went there. Anyway, the procedure is very simple and casual. Make sure that your test voucher has 4600 yen worth of stamps (purchased from the stamp counter on the 1st floor). Take the test voucher up to the driving examination room on the 2nd floor, trade it for a green paper that your examiner will write on. Take the green paper out to the bike track, write your name, address, and phone number on the back, hand it and your car license to the examiner. Sit around and wait until your turn. While the guy before you is being told why he failed, you get to take the bike for one lap around the perimeter of the course to get used to its handling. Come back to the starting gate, wait for the examiner to tell you you can go.

My specific test experiences

• Test 1: Fell off the ipponbashi. This was my only time having trouble with any of the techniques.
• Tests 2, 3, 4: My riding was not genki enough. It’s hard to describe genki; best that I can do is “the opposite of listless.” Basically they wanted me to accelerate harder, drive faster, and brake harder. Believe me, I have no problems accelerating or driving fast, as a look at my unfortunate Japan Traffic Violation History will confirm. But this test course is small, about 100 meters from one end to the other. And nothing in my nature or my driving training will let me roll out of a turn, see a red light 50 meters ahead, and accelerate for it. So it took a long time to psych myself up for driving fast in this artificial situation.
• Tests 5, 6, 7, 8: Got over the genki driving problem, failed here for a variety of reasons. “Incorrect turn/lane change procedure”, “Toe pointed too far out on gear shift”, “Used brakes after entering a curve”. A common theme here was also “wide left turns” (Japan is left-driving, so left turns are the tight ones).
• Tests 9 and 10: Had these in the bag, then got excited when I knew I’d passed and made stupid mistakes. For test 9, it was stopping with my right foot down (instead of the left) while parking; for test 10 it was forgetting my genki driving after passing the last challenge, the uphill start.
• Test 11: Finally passed!

Miscellaneous Advice

• People often say that you should expect to pass your bike test in 3-5 tries. Given the percentage of people that I saw passing at Fuchuu, I would say that I am right on par with my 11 tries, as less than 10% of people would pass on any given day. Keep this in mind when deciding to take the tests, rather than going to riding school (which will pass you upon graduation). All in all, this was still cheaper than riding school, but it took a lot of time. I was lucky to have an office that is not so far from the testing centre, an understanding boss, and a moped for getting me there and back more quickly than public transit.
• There is an official system of demerit points, etc., but at Fuchu this seems to not really be in use. You are either good enough to pass or not, where “good enough to pass” is defined as “not having made any mistakes.”
• In the same vein, officially you are supposed to be allowed to continue the test as long as you have not done anything classes as an automatic fail (hitting a pylon, putting your feet down on the balance beam, stalling, etc.). However, in reality, you will be stopped mid-test and told to return to the starting gate if the examiner sees no way that you will pass. The farther you get, the better you did.
• If you have never had a bike license in Japan before, you will not get your license right away upon passing the test. Rather, you will be given a list of several driving schools. Pick one in your area and you will get a coupon for a 3-hour class there. After you have taken that class you can go back and get your license.
• For foreigners: This whole process requires decent Japanese knowledge. If you are hopeless at Japanese, bring along a friend, or consider doing riding school (also available in English and other languages) instead.

Well, that’s it. Anybody who sees this and would like to ask anything in particular, feel free to email me or leave me a comment in this blog. I can’t claim to be an expert, but I have now seen a great number of riding tests so maybe I can help explain something…

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 12:32 pm and is filed under driving, japan, motorcycles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.