The last time I went to the Akashi license center to get a driver’s license I was shot down, but not before dragging Kuniko into it and holding up the entire office while they tried to figure out what the heck was going on with my situation. Today I went back, and ended up with pretty much the same result, except Kuniko was safely in New Zealand and able to avoid the whole thing.<\/p>\n
To boil it all down, I need the be able to prove that I had my license and used it in America for 90 days after the issue date. Unfortunately I renewed my license 46 days before coming to Japan, and the DMV in California apparently destroys their old records and replaces the information with the new. So, I couldn’t show when my license was issued, and so I was unable to get a license.<\/p>\n
The good news is that with all the trips back to America I’ve taken since 2003, I finally have 90 days in America under my belt. I went in today with all this information, and was first in line in the morning. <\/p>\n
The guy called me in around 9:30, and I presented all my paperwork after some polite chit-chat. He was the only guy in the office at first, but after a few minutes another guy came in and took the second person in line. <\/p>\n
As my guy was working on my paperwork, every person that came up to the desk had to be helped, and since my guy was nearest the front desk he stopped work on my application, went and helped everyone, and then came back and tried to figure out where he left off. That led to a lot of confusion on his part, and I had to bite back a comment about how nice it would have been if I was second in line instead of first.<\/p>\n
They are a lot better about saving records at the Japanese DMV – they pulled up the paperwork from last summer when I didn’t have enough days on my license. They referred to the old paperwork and that saved a lot of time. The guy got sidetracked a couple of times, and for a while he thought that I didn’t need to worry about the days at all. Sometimes he took me at my word, other times he insisted on proof. The other guy peeked in now and then and we started the paperwork over twice. He checked the dates three times, and had the other guy check once. And finally, after two hours, he said that I was OK and I could attempt the test.<\/p>\n
In my mind I imagined that I would go downstairs and take the test right away. If I failed I could come back every day this week until I passed. I’ve got the free time now. Unfortunately, the first driving test available was March 22nd, so I’ll have to wait until then. I was able to take the vision and the written test, and both of them were really easy. <\/p>\n
After all of that I was mentally drained from speaking in Japanese (intensely) for two hours. I rode the bus back to Akashi and decided to not waste the opportunity to stroll through the park. I ended up sitting on the wall of Akashi castle and enjoying the view – today it was really clear. I could see all the way from the edge of Kobe and beyond to Osaka, the Akashi bridge and Awaji Island, even Shikoku extending to the southwest. It was beautiful.<\/p>\n
Back home it was study and laundry, and I ran some errands around Okubo until the evening. I watched a little bit of TV and played a little Wii, then fried up some vegetables and used some Thai seasonings that were stored away in the cupboard. <\/p>\n
Tomorrow should be really quiet – in fact, the rest of the week and the weekend will be pretty mellow. I’ve got a couple of small things to take care of and some paperwork to fill out, but after that I’m all clear. I expected to spend all this time at the driver’s license center. Maybe I’ll use some of the time to study up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The last time I went to the Akashi license center to get a driver’s license I was shot down, but not before dragging Kuniko into it and holding up the entire office while they tried to figure out what the heck was going on with my situation. Today I went back, and ended up with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-jO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}