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My neighbourhood doesn’t really have a whole lot of legal motorcycle parking.  There are plenty of bicycle lots (and you can usually keep your bicycle at your building anyway).  Moped lots are cheap as well (3000 yen/month) and car lots are on par with what you would expect in Northwest Tokyo (20,000 yen/month).  If you have a motorcycle, though, your options are limited.  You can either rent out an entire car space (if the car lot owner will even rent to a motorcyclist), or you can park illegally.

Luckily, the police in the area are well aware of the plight of the motorcyclists, and generally they look the other way if they notice a motorcycle, particularly one with local plates, parked illegally.  A police officer once told me “Listen, as long as you aren’t so blatant about it as to park right in front of the station, or right on the main road…  Basically, if you pretend that you’re trying to hide your bike from us, we’ll pretend that you’ve succeeded.”  That said, if too many residents complain that a pile of bikes has got too big or intrusive, the police will put a nice “move your bike” warning out, and you’ll have to find another hidey-hole for a few months until you’re asked to move it again.

This is why I was annoyed to see the fellow with the white moped parked at the left.   Not only was he a moped, which means that there was perfectly good (and cheap!) moped parking less than 50 meters away from where he was parked, but between the way that he parked at an angle and the way that he stuck his helmet out the left side of his bike, he was using up almost half the sidewalk!  Bikes parked like this make it inconvenient for the local residents, making it more likely that we’ll be asked to move our bikes elsewhere.

Compare and contrast with how I’ve parked my bike.  It’s much bigger than the moped, but takes up much less room.  Can’t believe the moped driver is so discourteous…  Next time I may just move the moped back along the fence so that he’s parked in a way that makes sense.

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.

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…

Last june, I bought myself a used scooter. Believe me, this thing is not a big “get out of my way” hog by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it’s powered by the very same engine and drive train that runs such things as chainsaws and weed-whackers. Still, it can pretty much beat a car in Tokyo (traffic here usually only moves at about 40 km/h, and I can blow right past huge lines of cars that are waiting for red lights…)

The thing’s been great for me; No longer is Tokyo for me just a collection of islands that surround the train stations that I go to. Now I have a great understanding of how it all works together. Every day I get to witness people going about their lives as I travel from home to the dojo, from client to client, from the office to dinner with friends… That said, there are still some things that just stick in my craw:

1. Cyclists who ride on the wrong side of the street. The moped law says that I have to stick in the left (outside) lane. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve moved right to avoid a parked car and almost come to a head-on collision with some cyclist who is riding up the wrong side of the road. If you’re gonna be on the road, obey the laws of the road, yeesh.
2. Motorcycle riders who have magical feet of balancing. These guys ride along with their feet 1cm above the pavement, going 50 km/h. Presumably the feet are out there to help keep them balanced, but come on. I can keep my bike upright at 10% of that speed. And let’s be realistic; if your motorcycle decides that it’s going to break the law of gyroscopic procession and tip over when you’re going 50 km/h, there’s not much that your feet are going to be able to do to prevent that.
3. In a similar vein: Scooter riders who ride with their knees stuck straight out to the sides. Seriously, guys, if they need to be aired out that badly, you should probably just take a shower or something.
4. Utility trucks with lights and sirens. OK, the gas company, I agree with 100%. Even the water company, I could see them having to go to some emergency. But the electric company?! “We’ve got an electricity leak down at Tameike! Ohms and volts are spilling everywhere! Better put on the siren!”
5. The fact that ambulances have to beg people to move out of the way. Jeez, people, there’s a dying person in there. Yes, that dying person needs to be somewhere even more urgently than you do. Deal with it.
6. People who throw cigarettes out the window. Even in Toronto, this one always annoyed me, in a “litterbugs!” sense. Now that I’m on a scooter, it takes a much more personal meaning. Since none of these geniuses has managed to hit me yet, I don’t know from personal experience, but it’s only a matter of time before I find out first-hand that it is neither fun nor conducive to safe riding to have a crotch full of burning tobacco.
7. Left-Hand Drive + Expensive Car = Motorcycle Lane Gets Blocked. It doesn’t happen with cheap left-hand drive cars (garbage trucks, delivery vehicles, someone’s crappy buick station wagon that they bought while they were transferred to the USA). And it doesn’t happen with expensive right-hand drive cars. But you take a Mercedes, put a steering wheel on the left side, and I can guarantee you that that person will be half in the motorcycle lane and half in his own lane every single time he pulls up to a red light. Since the left-hand drive would tend to make him sit right of his lane, the only reason I can think of for this phenomenon is that the guy thinks of himself as More Important Than Everybody Else™ (he is a middle manager, after all), and it gets his goat that people on $400 scooters are just blowing by his expensive car while he sits in traffic.

Even so, it’s a lot of fun.. Just had to get that off my chest.