Yesterday, Monday, I took a trip to go get a Japanese driver's license. To be more specific, I went to go do what's called a "Gaimen kirikae" which means a switch over to a Japanese license from a foreign license. You'd think that all you have to do is show em your US license, pay some money, and wait for the Japanese driver's license to come in the mail a few weeks later, but no... this is Japan, it's the process that matters.
What happened? Well, because they have only one testing site in each prefecture (imagine having only one DMV testing site per state), and because Hokkaido is crazy huge, it took me 4 1/2 hours to get to the testing site. I left my apartment at 9AM. I got to the place at 1:30PM... and because I took public transit, I didn't take the time to eat breakfast or lunch up til this point! Anyway, let's just say that I went in expecting to take the written exam, and I came out still expecting to take the written exam... only next week. Another 4 1/2 hours, one way!
Like I said before, I took public transit, so I used that time to study up on a book called "Rules of the Road" which is basically one of those booklets that the DMV passes out for those people who are gonna take the written test. There are some crazy things in this book.
For example, there's a section in the "Rules of the Road" book called "Laws of Physics and Their Impact on Driving." I don't remember anything in the DMV handbook talking about friction, inertia, and centrifugal force! Later in that section there's this classic diagram of a fairly tall building with a car driving off of it. Not only that but on the right side of the building, it marks certain heights from the ground, and on the left side of the building it shows increasing speeds from ground. Apparently, the diagram is trying to show that hitting a wall at so-and-so speed has the same impact as driving that same car off of a building at so-and-so height. Oh man, I couldn't stop laughing.
One last thing, apparently, it's ok to jaywalk here in Japan. Well, as long as you look both ways and are careful that there's no incoming traffic. Duh.