Its time to be legal..

I've been living in Japan for a few years now and I am finally going to try and get my driver's license here. It sucks that I have to virtually go through the same steps I did when I was in high school many years ago. The driving test center is in a remote part of Kanagawa-ken and I have to get there extra early tomorrow as space is limited for test takers, 13 toe be exact. This is only for the written test as well. For the actual driving test, I would have to schedule another appointment at the center on a workday should I pass the written exam. Its pretty busy at work and we are undermanned so me taking off of work for the written test and a future driving test is pretty depressing. A fellow foreign co-worker of mines got his license a while ago but he had a license in Australia. Because Australia is part of the exempt list, all he really had to do was convert it to Japanese without any hassle. It also only took him a couple of hours to do everything so he didn't have to use a vacation day. I was really envious of that guy.. still am after reading all that I "may" have to go through in getting my license. Anyways, I have been lucky thus far driving almost all of Honshu, cop and accident free with a only valid license from a different country. I absolutely understand the world wide rule that luck must come to an end sometime and do not want it to happen to me while I'm behind the wheel without a real Japanese license. Its time to become legal!