Driving Japanese Style

Having lived in Japan as a permanent resident for the last four years, it’s not been difficult to notice a few motoring idiosyncracies.

One thing that almost goes unnoticed, is how you never see cars parked on the side of the road. The reason for that is that all car owners must by law have somewhere to park their car off the road.

The benefits of that are that traffic moves smoothly, unhindered by lines of double-parked cars. Another advantage is that there do not seem to be accidents involving young children suddenly darting out from between two parked cars and being hit by a car.

On the toll-controlled motorways, nobody has to stop to pay a toll at a manned cabin. Every car has what is called an ETC card mounted on the side of the footwell. All the driver has to do is slow down to allow the technology to electronically withdraw the toll fee from their bank. By the time the car arrives at the plastic barrier, it is already on the way up to allow the car to pass.

In car parks, the painted white line boxes allow plenty of space on both sides of the car to allow an easy exit from the car. Even better, as you reverse into a parking space, you can only go so far as the end of the space has what looks like kerbstones blocking any further incursion into the space. All the driver has to do is watch the sides as he or she reverses, the rear extremity of the car will take care of itself.

In the cause of keeping the new car manufacturing and assembly lines running, which is great for the economy, at a certain age an MOT will cost a small fortune. That is to get older cars off the road, forcing people to buy a new one.

My wife used to have an old Celica which she adored. However, when the MOT was going to cost her 750 pounds, for two years, she had no choice but to get rid of it. The MOT cost more than the car was worth! It is for this reason there is a healthy market in older cars being exported to other countries with a much lower MOT cost to contend with.

As for the legendary reliability of Japanese cars, with Toyota constantly topping polls such as JD Power, there is a very good reason why. It’s because whereas other manufacturers constantly develop new ways of manufacturing a car, the Japanese rely on refining traditional methods.

For those who may be interested to know if you can drive a car in Japan with your UK driving licence, you have two possibilities. One, you can get yourself an International Driving Permit, or two if your stay is going to be long-term, you can have your UK license translated into Japanese by the authorities.

Among other things I have noticed are, that speeding above the limit seems to be much less prevalent, and road rage is virtually none existent. What does exist is a generally law-abiding style of driving that is an exemplary lesson for the Western world of motoring to learn from.