We all come from different worlds — some born in the glow of neon city nights, others marooned in backwater towns. In the metropolis, public transport is a dream: pay your fare and ride home like a well-oiled machine. Taxis were cheap, too. I never bothered with a driver’s license until Fate, that cruel mistress, steered my path into a tiny Japanese town where buses crawl slower than a snail on a rainy night.
Prologue
It all started with a choice — a fork in the road between a conventional driving school and a driving camp. School is the easy route: after a long day’s work, you’d attend a few lectures, slog through practice sessions. But there is a catch. Most schools wouldn’t have a foreigner with a questionable grasp of Japanese in their midst, and not one had an English-speaking instructor to lend a hand. That left me with the camp — a beast of a place.
Requirements
The requirements were as endless as a seedy back-alley scam. You had to line up a pile of documents—your Juminhyo, a copy of your residence card, my number card, and the Hokensho—and get some papers stamped with your personal seal. Then came the forms: choose between an AT or MT license (a choice that made about as much sense as a crooked cop’s promise, but the MT costs extra), prove you’re tattoo-free, get your glasses if you cannot see without them, confirm you understand English, and even swear off smoking for two whole weeks. And don’t forget the price tag—321,850 yen. Now, if you’re sitting there thinking this little journey’s gonna be a vacation—scrap that notion. You’ll be studying like a rat in a trap, trying to decipher the cryptic lessons until you collapse onto a bed that hardly offers any solace. And come morning, bright and early at 7:00, you’re dragged back into that hellish schedule where mercy is a word long forgotten.
Camp
So, I packed my few belongings, grabbed a vacation permit from work, and headed off to the camp with a heart heavier than lead. The joint was filled with kids—school and high school types—while we grizzled outsiders were nothing more than an inconvenience. The food was as bland as a canteen meal, the schedule as tight as a noose, and there wasn’t even a corner to light up a smoke. Withdrawal hit hard in that suffocating atmosphere.
Schedule
Then came the lessons. The theory was taught by an English-speaking instructor, but the practical side was a whole other racket. They promised English training for the road, but the harsh reality was a crash course in Japanese. I had to scrape together the basics: 右, 左, まっすぐ, 信号, 交差点—the bare minimum to survive. It was as if the language itself was conspiring to keep me from the wheel.
Karimen
First up was the Karimen License stage — a trainee license that let you hit the streets only with an instructor breathing down your neck. I had to pass a paper test filled with missing data and a practical test that was supposed to be as simple as “drive, signal, don’t kill anyone.” But even simplicity can hide treachery. Just safe driving is not enough, you must perform by the book: you must check mirrors at certain points, turn your head at certain times and be as much closer to the manual as you can. But, Hell, practice was an easy part. The theoretical paper test is where Hell lies knowledge is the secondary thing to your luck. Just guess where they imply the rules violations, and where they did not imply the rules violations.
Pre-Honmen
After scraping through Karimen, I was thrown into Honmen—a week of training that turned the streets into a battleground. Rain, snow, darkness, and the occasional hellish combination of both made every drive a test of nerve. They even sent me up a serpentine mountain road, where every twist and turn felt like dancing on the edge of a razor.
The camp ran a brutal practice exam—a perfect hundred points on the board, each mistake deducting a couple of points. One misstep—a missed bicycle check or a speed limit flirtation—and it could all vanish. Some errors were fatal, wiping you out entirely, and if you blew it, you’d be paying extra for a second chance.
I won’t lie—I blew the final test. My nerves were shot, my hands trembling from two weeks without a smoke, and the final exam turned into a cacophony of miscommunication. My Japanese, just at N7 level, wasn’t enough when every split-second decision mattered. One moment of hesitation, one misunderstood command, and it all went to hell. I had to take another day in that inferno before I managed to nail it, all thanks to the small mercy of my battered language skills and a small prayer to the fox-God of these lands.
Honmen
Then came the finale—the bureaucratic dead-end at the police station. I had to book a slot via QR code and lug some stuff: a pencil, an eraser, my residence card and cash. All the other paperwork was handled by the driving camp staff, and for the second time I appreciated their work. Police checked my vision, my mobility, snap a mugshot, and scrutinize every letter of my name in flawless kana. I arrived sweating bullets for a 50-minute written test—a labyrinth of questions where every point was fought for like a scrap on a dark street. The rules were harsher than a detective’s conscience, and not even a minute of lateness was tolerated. Good thing that there was a smoking room just outside the entrance, I got my nicotine intake just before the exam. And because of that, I passed the test with 95 out of 100 score.
Finale
Was I happy with the experience? Hell no. The food was the kind of slop that made prison meals look gourmet, the written test was a cryptic mess designed to break a man’s spirit, and the schedule? A cruel throwback to school days or maybe even boot camp, minus the camaraderie. But the real killer? Two whole weeks without a smoke. Felt like I was doing time for a crime I didn’t commit. But in the end, I walked out with my license. My second crack at the final test went smoother than a jazz solo on a lonely midnight street, thanks to the instructor, that, maybe out of pity or just tired of seeing my sorry face, spoke in slow, simple Japanese that I could actually wrap my head around. That made all the difference.
So, was it worth it?
Yeah.
Enjoyable?
Not a damn chance.
But it could’ve been worse. In this line of life, things always can.
P.S.
I’ve been mulling over a couple of rides, the kind most folks would slap the label “retro” on. But when you take a good look at me—my threadbare suit, my worn-out fedora, my mannerisms that whisper of bygone days—you realize that I’m the very embodiment of retro. I’m not after some flashy new machine that burns rubber on every corner; I need something rugged, affordable, and with a touch of old-school soul. And let me tell you, I’m no sucker for those kei cars. They may be economical, but their lack of grunt and personality is as unforgivable as a cop who turns a blind eye.
A ride has got to pack a punch, both in spirit and horsepower.