The Japanese driving license test for foreign-license holders

First: you may not have to sit it at all

If your license was issued by one of the following, both the knowledge confirmation and the practical confirmation are waived, and the only thing standing between you and a Japanese license is paperwork:

• Iceland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Austria, the Netherlands, Canada, South Korea, Greece, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Slovenia, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Hungary, Finland, France, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Monaco, Luxembourg, Taiwan
• The United States — Ohio, Oregon, Colorado, Virginia, Hawaii, Maryland and Washington only

An Indiana license is exempt from the practical confirmation but not from the knowledge confirmation. Every other license requires both — including a US license from any state not named above, since the US exemption is granted state by state rather than country-wide.

Source Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department — “Converting a driving license obtained abroad into a Japanese license” (in Japanese) · Osaka Prefectural Police — “Converting a foreign license into a Japanese license” (in Japanese)

What changed on 1 October 2025

Any description of this test written before October 2025 is out of date in three ways at once. The old test was ten illustration-based questions with seven correct to pass. The current one is fifty text questions with forty-five correct to pass, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police add that it is held once a day, in the afternoon.

The move from pictures to sentences matters more than the count. An illustration question asked you to read a situation. A text true/false question attacks the wording of the rule: the qualifier — "always", "unless", "where a sign is posted", "within X metres" — is placed exactly where it decides the answer.

Source Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department — “Amended Road Traffic Act Enforcement Regulations, in force 1 October 2025” (in Japanese) · Kanagawa Prefectural Police — “For foreign nationals taking a driving test or converting a foreign license” (in Japanese)

It is not sat in Japanese unless you want it to be

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police publish the knowledge confirmation in twenty languages: English, Spanish, Persian, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, Thai, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Khmer, Nepali, Burmese, Mongolian, Ukrainian, Sinhala, Urdu, Arabic and Hindi.

Saitama publishes twenty-one, counting Japanese, as of 1 October 2025. Language availability is set and published prefecture by prefecture, and which days and which test centre you can attend can depend on the language you choose — so check the notice for the centre you will actually go to.

Source Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department — “Written tests available in foreign languages” (in Japanese) · Saitama Prefectural Police — “The application procedure for foreign license conversion has changed” (in Japanese)

What the test actually asks

The subject is Japanese road-traffic law. Where a rule matches the one you already drive under, the translated sentence is enough to answer it. What separates a pass from a fail is the set of rules Japan handles differently from most other countries:

• What the law requires of you at an unsignalised pedestrian crossing when somebody is crossing or clearly about to
• How priority is decided at an intersection with no signal and no sign, including when the two roads are different widths
• The exact distances that make stopping illegal, and the separate, shorter list of places where only parking is banned
• What a yellow light requires of you
• The default speed limit where no sign is posted — which changes on 1 September 2026

The last of those has a date on it and its own page:

From 1 September 2026, the default limit on roads without a centre line is 30 km/h

How to study for a 90 per cent pass mark

Ninety per cent is a bar you cannot clear while leaving one topic unlearned. Fifty questions allow five wrong answers in total. Working a small number of topics until they are solid beats one pass over everything.

1. Commit to true or false before you reveal the answer. Reading an explanation you have not yet argued with does not stick.
2. When you get one wrong, do not memorise the answer — find the word that misled you. It is usually a qualifier: "always", "within", "unless a sign indicates otherwise".
3. Learn numbers in blocks by topic. Some topics, parking distances above all, convert memorisation straight into marks.
4. Get used to how the rules are worded in the official rulebook. JAF publishes foreign-language editions of 交通の教則, the official guide to the rules of the road.

Source JAF (Japan Automobile Federation) — “Driving license translation service” (in Japanese)