From 2001 to 2014 I lived in Osaka, Japan. Japan was a safe and good place to live and build a family. More often than not, the people were kind and friendly -- which is more than I can say for my hometown of Seattle. So in no way is the following meant to disparage or disrespect the fine folk of Nippon.
I'd been riding an 83' K100 around Japan, using an international driver's permit which I got from AAA. It's good for 1 year, and I reapplied for one every year. My Japanese rider friends all teased me about it, saying I had lived in Japan long enough that I should get a "real" license. So I did my best.
First, a little background. Japan doesn't want people to ride big CC bikes. I'm not sure about 2023, but when I was there, motorbikes couldn't park in any parking garages, even if you pay full price. The attendant would just wave you off and shout "Tansha akan!" (Tansha is motorcycle, akan is Osaka dialect for "no good"). But you cannot park on the sidewalk with the bicycles and scooters either, or you get a big F'ing ticket like I did. So...that sucks. Park on the street. All these cool bikes from the 70's that we love? They weren't made for Japan, but for export. So every time you see a Z1 or a CB750K or a W3 in Japan? They are reverse-imports. That's why I couldn't find any clunker Japanese bikes to fix up, because there aren't any.
At some point, Harley Davidson and the US Gov. pressured Japan over their big-bike animus, and basically forced them to make it easier to sell big bikes (especially Harleys) there. "Easy ER" not easy. Again, it wasn't an anti-foreign product thing, they didn't want ANY big bikes. (It's also hard to get a car driver's license too).
Japan introduced a 3 tier motorcycle license. Small, medium and large cc bikes EACH have separate licenses! If a Japanese citizen has a class B license to ride 250-400cc bikes, they cannot ride a 750. In order to get that "O-gata" license, be prepared to pay and wait and pay again.
Driver's tests are MEGA strict in Japan. First of all, all testers are actual cops... and nowhere near as "friendly" as DOL/DMV folks. They are by the book, and don't chit-chat. And they certainly don't joke with cheeky white boys. They might have a stick up their butts, but it's regulation size, with an official stamp on it. One of the deterrents they use to keep everybody away is cost.
$10 for their rules and regulations book.
$33 to take the written test (which is in Japanese, but short, because I already had a US license)
$7 for a photo (official size)
$6 for an eye exam (yes, you have to pay)
$10 to use their bike to test (CB750 Nighthawk).
$16.50 PASSING FEE if you pass.
As a foreigner, I had to pay $30 for an official translation of my Washington State license. Nope, you can't have your Japanese wife do it, it has an official seal and all that. The only "easy" part was that as a rider with a foreign motorcycle license, I only had to take a short written exam, in Japanese, but that was fine. After paying all that money for paperwork, the testing site is way out in the middle of nowhere, and it's by appointment only.
IF YOU FAIL (and you almost certainly will) you have to pay all those fees again. They did say I wouldn't have to retake the written, but eye-exam? Every time. It's not like they are corrupt, they do NOT you riding a big-ass bike.
The testing site is immaculate, very fancy and large. The motorcycle only test site has it's own fenced in area, complete with fake intersections, hills, steel bars on the road for bumps, a lot of cones, working traffic lights, a train track with working lights, a curved section in the road, and the dreaded “Steel Bridge” which is a 30 foot long by 12 inch metal plate that you have to idle across. You cannot just drive across, and if your foot touches the ground, you fail.
In Japan you're literally at the DMV half of the day doing all your documentation and waiting. Lots of waiting. One man there waiting with me had failed 5 times. He was very focused.
So I rocked the course, put BOTH feet down and counted to 2 at every stop (as the law requires), used my hand-signals, and looked both ways at the train tracks, standing slightly over the bumpy section, and then... my foot touched halfway down the steel bridge.
$100 bucks to fail. (Gotta also pay for the trains to get there and back)
I tried it their way, but that was just way, way too strict for me. I continued to ride my infernal, foreign death machine using just the International Driver's Permit.
