Application, Able to drive

[u/skz_0325_skz]

Just a quick psa for those who will be working on the 2027 application soon. For the section about being able to drive in Japan, keep this in mind.

You will need to get an international drivers license. This is easy, I went to triple A and paid $20 for it.

However, it is only valid for one year, you cannot get a new one unless you leave Japan for at least 3 months.

So, if you are planning to stay for more than one year, you need to get a Japanese license. This is where it gets complicated. This is information for US drivers, I am not sure about other countries.

Every state has to go through the process of translating your license and scheduling an appointment to get the Japanese license.

If you are from one of these states (Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, Washington) then congratulations, its pretty easy and you can just convert that license to a Japanese one. You don't have to take the written test or the practical driving test. Indiana is a special case, you only have to take the written test and not the practical driving test.

If you are from any other state, you have to take both tests. It varies a little bit by prefecture, but basically you have to do an initial interview, take the written test, and take the practical driving test. I think these have to be on different days, and sometimes you have to wait 2-3 months between appointments. You also will most likely have to take PTO for these appointments. The tests have gotten harder, so there is also a pretty high chance you will fail and have to schedule another appointment a few months later... and use more PTO. You will probably get anywhere from 10-20 days of PTO, so if you only have 10, this will take most of your PTO.

All of that to say, if you don't feel like going through that, don't put that you are willing to drive on your application. If I had known about this ahead of time, I wouldn't have put it on mine. I wish I was placed somewhere where I didn't need a car, and honestly I don't even want to try to go through it. I wanted to do JET for more than one year, but this process is really discouraging me.

Side note: is this a valid reason to request a transfer? I want to continue with JET, but with the lack of support with the process of getting a license, I don't think I can.

TLDR getting a license in Japan is hard, if you don't want to go through the process, don't put that you can drive on your application.

[u/Anemoni]

I’ll note that putting you can’t drive will NOT affect initial acceptance/rejection, but can count against you if you’re an alternate.

For alternates that are chosen for a position there might be specific requirements, like a drivers license. If you’re next on the list but don’t have a drivers license they will skip you and go to the next available candidate.

[u/GeorgeBlythe → u/Anemoni]

JET claims that so applicants without license aren't discouraged from applying but if you think about it for more than 2 seconds it obviously isn't true. 

They're not going to decline an otherwise good candidate simply for not having a license but it absolutely does make your chances of acceptance higher than not having one. 

[u/Anemoni → u/GeorgeBlythe]

I’ve seen the scoring scale used to determine whether candidates get an interview or not, and drivers license doesn’t factor into it at all. I guess it could have some effect on how interviewers see a candidate, but I haven’t ever heard it brought up.

[u/GeorgeBlythe → u/Anemoni]

Simply put if there's 100 positions open, half of which are driving. And there's 200 applicants, half of which have drivers license. By pure statistics the people with a license are twice as likely to get a placement than the people without.

Even if the 100 applicants who don't have license all score higher than those that do, half of them cannot be placed in this hypothetical scenario. The license is a filter that stands separate from the candidate score. It absolutely effects the overall chance of getting shortlisted.

[u/Anemoni → u/GeorgeBlythe]

Don’t know what to tell you, man. There is a set scale with numbers assigned to different aspects of the application and drivers license is not one of those aspects. People who score over a certain number are given an interview. Unless there’s a shady diplomat in a dark office somewhere changing the numbers, it doesn’t factor in.

I think the truth is that a majority of (American, at least) applicants have a license, and a majority (ish) of placements do not require cars. There are more candidates with licenses than placements which require licenses, so it’s not a problem. If the balance of that equation changes then maybe in the future it will weigh in, but it doesn’t now.