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Because this is Japan, passing the riding test is not the final step in getting a motorcycle license. As many disappointed license hopefuls will find out, when you finally hear those magic words “congratulations, you’ve passed”, you’re still not quite there; there are still two steps left. The final step is exactly as you would assume happens in any country around the globe: You have to go through a bit of paperwork to actually get a new license certificate with a Motorcycle endorsement on it. The penultimate step, however, is Pure Japan (TM): You have to go to motorcycle school after you have passed your motorcycle test.

The School

In Tokyo, at least, the motorcycle school is 3 hours, and the police contract it out to local riding schools (who actually give out most of the licenses in Japan — very few people get their licenses by taking their test from the police). After passing your test, you are presented with a list of riding schools. Pick one near you and the police give you a coupon for the 3-hour riding school there. The school that I chose, for its proximity to my house, separates the school into 3 50-minute segments.

Segment 1: Motorcycle Simulator

The company that makes this simulator would actually have a pretty good side business going if they decided to make controllers for arcade games. The three of us plus the instructor rode on a very realistic motorcycle through a very unrealistic town — the most peril-fraught town in existence, with cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians doing the most idiotic things imaginable. It was really no wonder that every third vehicle in this town seemed to be a speeding ambulance! The simulation actually seemed to be designed to make you have accidents. When I pulled up behind a bus, the instructor said “Just go around”. “No; if I go around, someone is going to step out from behind the bus and I’m going to hit them.” “Just do it.” [vrooom] “Oh. look at that, someone stepped out from behind the bus and I hit them.” “See, that’s why you shouldn’t pass stopped buses.”

The instructor himself demonstrated that it was not possible to get through the simulation without at least one accident. He rode through that town like a pro, expertly dodging seemingly-blind cyclists, ball-chasing children running into the streets, etc., until a car appeared out of nowhere and wiped him out. When we put it in super-slow-motion replay, we found that the car had been in a park, hiding behind some trees ready to start moving when it saw him.

Segment 2: The videos

This was 50 minutes of driving license instructional videos, and they didn’t seem to care which ones they showed us, as long as they showed 50 minutes’ worth (There were 2 videos chosen at random, the second of which was unceremoniously stopped when the clock hit 3:30:00).

The videos were exactly as you would expect. Some guy comes on the screen: “Hi! I’m some aging retired soccer player! I helped lead Japan to victory in some soccer contest! Do you know, on the soccer pitch, there are rules and manners to be followed, and if I don’t follow them, I could get a yellow card, or even a red card! Well, do you know what else has rules and manners that you have to follow?” At this point, everyone in the room was giddy with anticipation. What could the mystery activity, filled with rules and manners, referred to in this driving license instructional video, be? Could it be checkers? Marriage? Luckily, he broke the suspense by reaching into his shirt pocket (from which he’d previously produced the yellow cards and red cards) and producing his driving license. “It’s having a driving license!” This only bothered me a bit, as there are actually almost no rules or manners associated with the simple act of having a driving license.

Segment 3: Riding

Ah, the fun part.  My two classmates were both seasoned riders who had to get their licenses because they’d finally been caught riding without a license.  With this in mind, the instructor pushed us pretty hard, and it was a challenging 50 minutes of riding.  Don’t get me wrong; I can easily ride for 50 minutes, but that is on the roads where you’re pretty much going straight most of the time.  This instructor probably didn’t want anybody to get bored, so we certainly were not going straight:  Letter-S, Crank Course, Number-8, Slalom, Balance Beam,  U-Turns, Letter-V, Slalom while going around a corner.  Then the same thing going the other direction.  Then the same thing with one hand.  All this while avoiding all of the cars and bike drivers that were just taking their first lessons.  Really fun, but really challenging.

Anyway.  This was on Thursday.  Friday morning I went and picked up my new license card, and now I am fully licensed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 10:08 am and is filed under 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.