Moral of the following story: Some things are really nothing like you expect them to be.
Starting off with the explanation of the word Menkyo, which is actually an abbreviation for "Unten Menkyo" 運転免許 which means driver's license (literally "license to drive") in Japanese. This is similar to English where many people would just say "did you get your license yet?" and by that, dropping the "driver's" part - funnily enough there is no similar abbreviation in Germany. We either say the actual word which is "Führerschein" or "Fahrerlaubnis", or we refer to it by a colloquial term like "Lappen" which is actually the word for a cleaning cloth or rag. Just a fun little tidbit of information you'll probably never going to use in your life. You're welcome.
While I was writing up the first draft of this, I was actually still in the process of getting my license. To be fair, the people who have followed me on Insta throughout that time will have already seen some snippets on how this whole thing went, but since I powered through the first days with almost no breaks in between, I had a little time to relax during the last few days, so I was writing this up as I was on the day before my big driving exam, to be able to give you as fresh an update as I could before my brain tried its best to protect me by pushing away what hell of a rollercoaster ride this was (and boy, let me just tell you now after the fact, it did a pretty good job of doing so).
I never got a license back in Germany, so it's a little bit hard to make a comparison between those two. This was the very first time for me to get a driver's license, and I've got to be honest, I'm kind of glad that it went like that, because it meant I didn't have to unlearn a bunch of old stuff and relearn, since Germany has right-hand traffic and Japan the opposite left-hand traffic. It was good for me to have the opportunity to start from scratch in the country I plan to drive for probably the rest of my life. So, I'm just going to share what my experience was like and everyone of you reading this can compare it with their experiences of their own countries (and maybe share it with me in the comments, I'd love to know!).
I decided to go to something called "Gasshuku" 合宿, which is a system where you pay for board and spend about two weeks (depending on the program) right where you are going to school. This term is not a term specific to driving schools, there are other types of Gasshuku as well. However, this one was a driver's Gasshuku and since I didn't have any people in close proximity who knew what it was like to go to a Gasshuku, I painted a very different picture in my head from what actually ended up happening.
For me, being able to just concentrate on learning this one thing in a very focused way for a limited amount of time sounded appealling. Just last year, I was able to take almost 6 months to focus solely on studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which, for those of you who have never heard of it, is a pretty complicated exam which does test your ability to study and work in patterns a lot more than it tests actual proficiency in Japanese (see my previous blogpost). However, thanks to this experience I at least had the advantage of being alert over what Kanji were used in which ways and recognize patterns within the exam itself, which really helped with the half-term driving exam as well as the final driving exam.
I don't know why, but I associated the word "Gasshuku" with a system that would include actual school lessons to which we'd show up and meet in person with teachers and other students - maybe I'm just old like that. However, due to the 'rona, they have changed all of the theory lessons to be online which came as a huge surprise to me. I am obviously understanding of the whole panini situation going on, but it's been a few years now and I thought they'd gone back to in-person lessons by this point in time (other educational institutions like the universities that hosted the JLPT were not as pedantic when they put tons of foreigners from all over the prefecture into one tiny classroom with poor ventilation and no social distancing). Turns out, not having to schedule in-person lessons and schedule the driving lessons around those theory lessons is probably a lot easier and way more flexible on the school's part, which I do get behind from an economic standpoint, but my god was I lonely this whole time through. If I'd known that lessons would be online, I would have never had agreed to go there. If theory lessons online are the new normal then it would've been a lot better for me to just stay home and be able to ask my partner about anything I didn't understand. But at the Gasshuku, I was left struggling to fill in the blanks with the books we were handed as well as the help of the driving instructors here and there, but it would have been so much of a greater learning experience to be able to ask questions right the minute they popped up.
Also, when I say online lessons, I don't mean something like Zoom meetings. I'm talking about a very shitty online system where you had to log in and let an AI-system track your facial movements to make sure you were actively watching the 50-minute long video lessons. If you'd just look down to the side to take notes, the AI would immediately react and ask you if you were actively watching. If there was any kind of pop-up on your device, the AI would instantly react by counting this as a No-Go and throwing you out of the video session. Didn't matter if by that time you had already watched 40 of the 50 minutes, you had to start again from minute 0 and rewatch the whole thing. I had it happen about five times that my computer was just randomly doing something in the background, or reminding me of an update, and the video just stopped. Two out of those five times I was nearly done watching the video and had to start from the beginning. It was really frustrating, time-consuming and overall a very shitty system. Oh yeah, and you weren't able to stop the video to get something to drink, turn on the light or go to the bathroom. If you weren't visible on camera for the AI anymore, it was another No-Go.
To give you a complete rundown on how this whole Gasshuku system worked, I'll first share how my experience went overall. On the day I and another young woman arrived, we were brought to the school immediately. They put our luggage in a space where honestly anyone could have had easy access to it if they wanted to, which now in retrospect was kind of a red flag right from the start. Then we got lunch that was laughably terrible - literally a pre-packaged meal that costs around 100Yen and I was wondering where the 40.000Yen I paid upfront for food went to. After that, we had an introductionary period that didn't really have the clearest instructions which is why I ended up misunderstanding them (and this wasn't due to me being a foreigner, I know that some of my Japanese peers misunderstood the assignment as well).
I was lucky enough to have the apartment I stayed at in walking distance of the school, so after the introduction I took my luggage and went there. The young woman that started with me lived in another apartment and didn't have the freedom to go there during her break, since she'd have to take a bus to get there. I tried to make myself at home by unpacking all of my stuff before I had to go back to get my very first driving instructions, after which I was sat into a car for the first time, in the evening on the day I arrived - when it was already dark outside.
The first week contained of 10 theory lessons, 9 of which were online and the first one was the introductiary course we had in-person, as well as a total of 12 driving lessons. There was also a pre-exam online that had to be passed in order to be able to participate in the actual exam. At the end of the first week, we had a half-term exam, which if passed grants you with the certificate of "karimenkyo 仮免許", which my dictionary translates as a provisional or temporary license. This temporary time frame is 6 months, in which you are supposed to finish all of your driving and theory lessons and pass the final exam to get your final driver's license.
With this temporary license, you are allowed to drive on the normal street under specific circumstances. The 12 driving lessons in the first part only covered the basics and let you practice within the vicinity of the driving school itself. After I passed the exam, I was sat into a car on my first drive outside of the driving school in the evening on the same day, which was extremely stressful. Having to pass the driving exam, but also the theory exam right afterwards in order for me to not have to stay another day put a huge amount of pressure on me that felt very crushing, so after I passed I was completely drained of energy. I also had noone to share the joy with, so I just went back to my room and started watching the first online lesson for the second week right away since I had some time to spare before my driving lesson that evening. My driving instructor on that evening showed me what it was like if you try to drive a curve without lowering your speed or how it'll feel to have to use the break in an emergency, which honestly was such a stressful situation to be in on its own, but it was exaggerated by the day I already had anyways due to the exams. After that, I was guided onto the road and it was really, really tiring. I was just at the end of my energy bar at that point, but I luckily somehow managed to drive safely.
I continued to have a lot of my driving lessons at night, which sucked because we were supposed to remember the routes for some of them for later on. Without being able to remember stuff I'd seen I was almost completely unable to remember any of the routes, or at least I'd forget certain points. I don't think this was a really well-made system to be honest, especially since you don't have to remember a route for the final driving exam.
Anyways, the second week consisted of 16 theory lessons, 12 of which were online again. 3 of the other 4 were the first-aid lessons which I'm grateful they did in-person - imagine if they didn't and just let people who watch their favourite show while they should be learning about first aid onto the street to drive. I finally made a friend that unfortunately went home two days later. At least I got to have breakfast with someone else for two days.
The amount of driving lessons also increased in the second week, 19 in total. Two of those lessons were inside the driving school vicinity, teaching how to park vertically as well as changing direction driving backwards. All of the other lessons were on the normal street, I personally found the highway lesson to be the scariest.
If you then finished all of the online lessons as well as another online pre-exam, you were qualified to participate in the driving exam which by the point of me writing the first draft of this blog was still in the future for me. I was scared if I was going to be able to pass, because I just really wanted to go home and didn't want to have to stay another day. If the final driving exam is passed, the Gasshuku is over and you get a certificate that qualifies you to go to your local license center to do the license exam and finally get your driver's license. I wasn't looking forward to that, because the time was shorter and the questions double the amount of the half-term exam, so I felt like I wasn't going to be able to pass that in the first go, but I hoped I'd be able to get it done and finally have my driver's license by the end of 2023.
To be fair, except for one teacher as well as my examiners, the teachers and the apartment, which was clean and quiet, were the only positives in all of this. I got really lucky with my first instructor who was kind and funny, but unfortunately I didn't see him again until almost the end. My main instructor in week 2 was a woman that I also got along really well with, her combination of being strict and friendly was just the perfect cup of tea for me personally. Pretty sure there are people that take her as too strict, but I have always liked people who can have a nice conversation and laugh with you, but be stern and consistent the moment they go back to their professionalism. Some other thing I didn't know beforehand was that in Japan it's normal to be taught by various teachers in your driving lessons. My best friend informed me that in Germany you get assigned one teacher and that teacher is by your side until your exam. When I brought this up to a teacher during a driving lesson, they told me that their driving school was comparatively differing from the normal system in Japan by at least assigning each student a main instructor. Glad I got along well with mine, even though I didn't see her all the time.
I'm not going to lie, towards the end of these two weeks my ability to add more information into my brain was completely worn out and the last few theory lessons I watched while simultaneously watching something else on my phone. Funnily enough, when I was nonstop looking at my phone, the AI didn't react even once. I find it so stupid that we are at a time where we don't make sure people actually listen in, especially when it comes to something as important as driving. We don't give people the opportunity to ask questions, but we expect them to stare at a screen for hours on end and make sure to not actually take notes or turn the page over. It was such a shitty system and I hated every minute of it.
Of course there are upsides to it, like being able to get those lessons in in the evening or early morning, like you had a lot of freedom on how you'd manage your schedule. However, the huge downside was that since we didn't really have an actual schedule with theory lessons planned into it, the school would constantly update our schedules for the driving lessons and therefore make it impossible to plan ahead on when you could squeeze in a lesson. And even though I tried that sometimes, one time my computer again ran some program in the background and the AI reacted and threw me out of the session. Then, I had about 30-40 minutes left until my driving lesson in the evening which was not enough time to start anew, so I just didn't do anything and it was really a waste of time. With in-person lessons, shit like that doesn't happen, I'd have the freedom to look up or inquire about Japanese vocabulary that I didn't comprehend, and be able to ask to clarify certain things that needed more clarification right on the spot. It'd also have helped with the loneliness aspect, even if I wouldn't have made friends or anything. We humans need basic interactions with one another and I really can't stand when people as a collective try to convince themselves otherwise (as is often the case online).
As you could probably guess by the last sentence, my biggest problem with this whole system and the Gasshuku in general was that it left me extremely isolated. When I wasn't doing driving lessons, I was in my room studying or watching these stupid online lessons. In the evening I would be so tired from overflowing information input-only that I'd be falling asleep before anyone I care about (my partner, my best friend back in Germany, my mom,...) would be able to reach me and have a chat. More and more, I became secluded and even ended up having two breakdowns - one at the end of the first week and another one during the second week. By the second time I was almost packing my bags, that's how broken I felt. But reminding myself of how far I'd already gotten, how many shitty online lessons I'd gone through and the money that had been invested in this whole thing, I pushed through and I was almost at the end of it. Am I glad I did all of my driving lessons in the span of two weeks? Yeah, totally. Would I do it again if I knew beforehand what to expect? No fucking way. This was torturous.
The isolation got even worse when I went to eat my three meals that were honestly kind of a bummer as well. I don't know if they thought that because we are students we don't need much food or whatever, but as I already pointed out I paid 40.000Yen upfront to make sure I would be well-fed and didn't have to waste any energy on thinking about what I'd be eating while studying. The amount of food or rather lack thereof however made me really angry and I ended up having to buy myself some add-ons which in turn made me spend a lot more money than I had anticipated to. I was hungry a lot. No over-exaggeration, this was my breakfast for a day where I had 4 consecutive hours of lessons (1 driving lesson and the 3 first-aid lessons) and I was honestly speechless. It was raining and I didn't even really have a lot of time before my driving lesson started, but I sprinted to the closest conbini to get myself some Onigiri and also some protein, because I knew I'd never be able to function on this:
The right one is a tiny egg salad sandwich with brioche bread and next to it is something Japanese people call "corone", again brioche bread filled with chocolate. This could probably feed a toddler, but not a grown-up.
Also, sitting in between all those people at breakfast, lunch and dinner, who seemingly already knew each other felt really lonesome at times. I would sit there and listen in on their conversations and I just felt abandoned. It wasn't just that I didn't have anyone to talk to about the lessons with, it was also the fact that I didn't have anyone to rant to about a certain teacher I disliked or someone to share my happiness about (unexpectedly) actually passing the half-term exam on the first try. Or honestly, just talking about anything completely unrelated would've been nice as well. I don't mind being alone, but I also really like being with other people and having a chat. It certainly would have helped with processing all the information I had to silently put into my brain every day.
There was about one day left to go for me at the point of writing the first draft of this and I had finished all the annoying online assignments that I needed to in order to be able to do my exam. I really just had to pass my driving exam the next day, so I could finally go home. If I didn't pass, I'd have to stay another day and I really didn't want that.
Good news is: I didn't have to stay another day! I managed to pass my driving exam on the first try and if my peek on the examiner's sheet was correctly interpreted, I passed with more or less flying colours (as in 90 out of the total 100 points). I was criticised for turning on the winker too late (which was impossible to turn it earlier at that point because another car was parked very close to the intersection and the driver of said car was walking on the street right in front of the intersection, but whatever, if you want to minus points for that, feel free to do so) and I forgot to rearrange the mirror after parking sideways - which also happened to me many times during the driving lessons. I really didn't care about those points being reducted, because if instead I would've made a mistake during the sideway parking like bumping into something or not positioning the car inside the marked space, it would have been an immediate fail (like, re-do on the next day fail) and that stress left me nervous as fuck. But whatever, the moment I knew I could go home I was overflowing with joy, which is why I think it was good that I wrote up this first draft right before my final driving exam. When rereading it to finish this up, I realized my brain had already been doing its job to protect me by forgetting almost all of it.
I really wanted to try and start 2024 with a driver's license already in my pocket, so I went to the license center on December 22nd to try and tackle the exam. I didn't really believe I could do it, especially since I wasn't able to pass a single one of the mock exams I had done beforehand. Just as a reference, I came back from driving school boot camp (as I like to call it, 'cuz that's really how it felt) on the 18th and basically immediately went into the exam, which is crazy now that I think about it. After I had taken the exam and waited over an hour to get my results, I literally couldn't believe it when I saw my number written on the black board. I took out my phone to take a picture and zoom in on it, because I simply didn't trust my own eyes. I was so sure I had failed at that point, like not even overexaggerating, I wasn't trying to be humble or anything. There were certain questions in the exam I didn't know the answer to at all and just guessed. It still seems like a miracle to me that I passed on the first try and went home with my driver's license on that day.
When I took the exam, there were about 8 or 9 other English-speaking foreigners in the license center doing the exam with me. They were seated a little separated from the people who'd do the exam in Japanese, where I was seated. When we were brought back into the exam room to finish our papers, I saw just one of those 9 foreigners sitting there. It was so crass to me that 90% of foreigners who tried to do the exam in English failed while I was able to pass on my first try doing it in Japanese. When I talked to the one foreigner who managed to pass, she told me that it was her fifth try already - and doing these exams over and over again is freaking expensive! I've heard from foreign acquaintances that the exam is really complicated in English, and I tried to do one of the mock exams in English once just to see how the questions would look. I kid you not, the way the questions were phrased were not simply confusing on a driver's license-level. It seemed to me that they just took the confusing Japanese phrasing and put it through Google translate or asked a non-native English speaker to translate it. Not only did the sentences make no sense, the sentence structure was off and the used vocabulary unnecessarily complicated. Like, obviously, I understand making the test a little more complex in language so that it is an actual challenge, but making it so hard to understand for non-Japanese speakers that they have to try 4 or 5 times before they finally get lucky enough to pass seems a little over-the-top to me.
In the end, I personally was lucky enough to go home with a brand new sparkly driver's license that day. My partner would immediately lend me the car on the next day so I could show him my driving skills and let's just say, he was impressed. He told me that he expected me to be a lot more stop-and-go, and we drove together for a while until we went home to Aomori for New Year's. After 2024 had started, he let me drive alone for the first time and has been lending me the car few days of the week. I honestly really enjoy driving and look forward to doing it more, especially on the countryside. Who knows, maybe there will be drive-with-me-videos coming in the future? I know for sure now that I really enjoy driving and I'm glad I did my driver's license. In my personal case, I think just being able to drive now gives me a sense of freedom and mobility that I have never experienced before. This has improved my mental state, as I don't feel as stuck as I did in the past few months, or years to be honest. Wherever I wanted to go, if I wanted to do some shopping or if I had to get a check-up at the clinic, I'd always have to ask my partner to drive me anywhere. Now that I have the ability to drive, I only have to ask him if I can have the car for a certain day to be able to go anywhere I want, which might be the most normal thing for some of you readers, but for me it means a tremendous amount of freedom I have never had the pleasure to experience before. Everything I went to I had to go by bicycle, some of these bike rides took 40 mins in each direction. I also do love cycling, but having to run errands with only a bike can be extremely draining, tiring and depending on the weather - even dangerous. My partner and I are also in the process of getting another car so that we don't have to share one.
If you or someone you know plans to move to Japan and thinks about getting their license there, I really can't recommend doing it at a Gasshuku, as those are really not focused on making it doable for foreigners who aren't fluent in Japanese. And even though I am fluent in the language, it was still such a rollercoaster ride I went on. If I had to do the whole shtick again, I wouldn't go for a Gasshuku. 1/10.
Until next time,
EFA
Thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate it so much when someone reads the stuff I write about. Hope you could find this somewhat insightful? If you did, maybe consider leaving a comment - especially if there are open questions to the stuff I talked about. I just wrote down what had an impact on me personally, but if there's anything you'd like to know about doing your driver's license in Japan, just ask away and I'll try my best to answer!
Comentarios