Unlike America where a driver's license is easier to get than a dog license, Japan makes you go through a lot of very time consuming, expensive pain (roughly five thousand dollars worth) before you can get a license.

Wonderfully, though, it used to be that if you had an international driver's permit, you could pretty much drive indefinitely on that (with minimal cost each year to renew it in your home country). And, if you had the foreign license and met a few simple criteria, you could just pay a few bucks and get a Japanese license issued from it. [...]

Buying a car in Japan is a daunting task. Or, to be more precise, selecting a make/model of car to buy in Japan is a daunting task. Considering only domestic (Japanese) cars, there are nine major makers (Itsuzsu, Daihatsu, Honda, Suzui, Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Subaru) representing an incredible 217 models (a stunning 69 from Toyota alone). Then there are about 15 major foreign makers, representing another 120 different models.

The text of this post was originally written in April, 2004 as part of an online diary I kept before I actually started my blog. I'd forgotten about it until I ran across it in February 2008. I inserted it into my blog then, assigning dates appropriate to the content instead of to the time I actually added it. Thus, these April 2004 posts show up as my "first posts" in my list of posts, even though I didn't actually start a blog until a year later with my first post about buying a car in Japan.

There's nothing here [...]
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The text of this post was originally written in April, 2004 as part of an online diary I kept before I actually started my blog. I'd forgotten about it until I ran across it in February 2008. I inserted it into my blog then, assigning dates appropriate to the content instead of to the time I actually added it. Thus, these April 2004 posts show up as my "first posts" in my list of posts, even though I didn't actually start a blog until a year later with my first post about buying a car in Japan.

There's nothing here [...]
View full post »

The text of this post was originally written in April, 2004 as part of an online diary I kept before I actually started my blog. I'd forgotten about it until I ran across it in February 2008. I inserted it into my blog then, assigning dates appropriate to the content instead of to the time I actually added it. Thus, these April 2004 posts show up as my "first posts" in my list of posts, even though I didn't actually start a blog until a year later with my first post about buying a car in Japan.

There's nothing here [...]
View full post »