Tomorrow our 19 y.o. starts on a journey that we know little about: getting a Japanese driver's licence from scratch. He's taking a gap year after high school and is not sure about what he wants to do after that.
One thing he can do now to prepare for the future is get a driver's licence, and because Japan and Australia have a cosy mutual relationship over driver's licences, arriving back in Australia with a Japanese licence is a distinct advantage (especially when you don't have parents living in the same country as you). He'll be able to get an Australian licence without doing 100 hours of driving or taking a test. It'll mostly just be a paperwork challenge (translation of licence included).
However, getting a licence in Japan bears only a vague resemblance to what we've seen his older brother do in Australia. And so we walk alongside him and learn together. Here is the chart the school has given him.
It seems as though most of the learning will happen at the school, we're unclear as to whether he'll do any "learner driving" with us at all. Having been a little bit involved with our eldest in "getting his driving hours in", I think this method, though expensive, will definitely be good for our stress levels (and probably our relationship with him too).
An integral part of the process is 26 lectures, which is not something done in Australia. I guess it's good to learn these separately from the stress of actually driving? Perhaps safer?
The other advantage is that they coach you specifically for the test, so there is little chance of failure, apparently!
We're thankful for God's provision of the finances to do this, because we didn't budget for it and it definitely wouldn't fit in a usual missionary budget.
We really feel like, even after 22 years of this parenting journey, that we're still feeling our way along. There have been so many unexpected challenges and there's no map, especially within the missionary life. And even more so with transitioning young adults to independent post-school life. At times it's agonising and it certainly drives us to our knees pretty much on a daily basis.
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