TOKYO, Feb. 25, 2022—A 70’sh man, who moved to Hokkaido, has had his first bitter taste of Japanese bureaucracy when he walked in to the local police station to change his American driver’s license to Japanese, the application that in most other countries is processed immediately.
He and his wife moved to Hakodate from California, where they lived the past 50 years, late last year, intending to live the rest of their lives car-free.
Weeks later, they realized that they needed a car for shopping and other errands in a hilly city where roads get trencharous with snow and ice in winter. So they approached the local police to change their California driver’s licenses.
What they had anticipated to be a plain document submission to the police and other authorities turned out to be a long and frustrating bureaucratic maze: When they showed up at the local police station in January thinking that by presenting their California driver’s licenses, Japanese licenses will be issued, they were told to take physical behind-the-wheel motor vehicle driving aptitude practices a minimum of twice at police-designated driving schools. It costs $400 for each of them. They also were told to present to police documents, issued by the Japan Automobile Federation, which is comparable to AAA, that their California driver’s licenses are bona fide and valid for no less than six months. The cost is $30 for each.
Driving schools typically hire retired police officers as ‘advisor,’ ‘deputy head master,’ and other senior positions.
The elderly couple have been struggling through this bureaucratic maze over more than a month and still do not have their Japanese driver’s licenses. ‘I heard that the Japanese bureaucracy is very outdated but what we are experiencing is beyond our expectations,’ the husband told The Prospect speaking that his name not be disclosed.
Intentionally making public services complicated and costly is not limited to this incident and in fact, it is ubiquitous almost across Japanese public sector administration. The most recent example is COVID-19 vaccination. In many countries, residents walk up to hospitals and any other vaccination points without carrying vaccine vouchers and after having been jabbed, they are issued shot certificates. Japan mails vaccine vouchers to residents, without which they won’t receive shots. Japan residents who want to carry government-issued electronic vaccine certification need to first register in the ‘My Number’ taxpayer/social service numbering system, or else, they are denied forcing them to carry stamped certificates of two shots and a booster that is written in Japanese alone. If they need an English certificate, many local governments ask them to pay fees.
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