Learning to drive

Our eldest turns 16 in a couple of months, only weeks before we return to Japan. Our friends are beginning to moan about the 100 hrs practise required for their maturing teenagers. So periodically we're fielding questions about him getting his licence.

This is a wide road!

At this point it's all on ice. He'll have to learn sometime later when he's back in Australia.

It has been suggested that he could learn to drive in Japan, but from a little bit of research, that sounds like a little too much for us to cope with (unless we were desperate). Here are some blog posts about foreigners getting a driver's licence in Japan:

Learning to drive in Japan: http://www.alientimes.org/Main/GettingAJapaneseDriversLicenseFromScratch

or

http://gakuran.com/driving-in-japan-passing-the-japanese-drivers-test/

Personal experience:

http://fendrri.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/getting-japanese-drivers-license-from.html

We're very fortunate as Australians, we didn't have to do a test to get our Japanese licences because they have a bilateral agreement with Australia and over 20 other countries. Americans, along with many others, have to do a practical test and it isn't common to pass that first time around (see here).