License conversion, take 4

Today I felt a sense of déjà vu. I travelled back to the driver's license center in the rain, just like last time. I stopped at the same convenience store at the same arrival time, just like last time. Even two acne spots that I had last time had regenerated themselves on my face in the same locations. I was absolutely unmoved by the irony; I was not looking forward to today at all.

There were, however, signs that things were looking up. The rain stopped as I arrived at the center. The car and the proctor were also different. I didn't have to do third party duty for another person. And, we got our test results half an hour earlier. (More on that in a bit.)

A bunch of local driving school representatives were getting briefings today at the test center. They took their company cars and parked them in the testing carports. The white one in the center is the same make and model as my car back in the states.

I also made some changes myself. During the lunch break, I walked the track as usual. This time, however, I measured the distances of 30 meters from each turn where I had to signal into them. It was actually easy to do this. Here's the logic:

• I am 6'7" in freedom units. In metric, that's about 200 cm.
• I can walk my entire height in six back-to-back paces.
• Fifteen of me, one stacked on the other, is about 30 m.
• Therefore, I need to take 90 steps from the start of the turn, and I would note the stopping location on the copy of the course map that I was given. This was the location where I was to begin the signalling process.

I took to the course with the proctor. I was first today, and one of five people. (Only one person was Japanese; the rest were foreigners.) I definitely learned from my mistakes; I signalled properly, and didn't roll back from a stop. I completed the course, and the proctor gave me his feedback. Interestingly enough, he had only one point to bring up. Apparently, even though I was maintaining proper speeds, I wasn't using the right gears on the transmission to maintain that speed. (I asked him how I did with the blinkers, and stopping at the pole at the end of the course right before pulling back into the carport form which I started. His respective responses were fine, and a bit far from the white line, but perfect otherwise.) That was all that he had to say.

The map of the course that I have to drive, complete with my additional, descriptive notes and pointers

Here's the thing about finding out your test results. The proctor will not directly tell you whether or not you failed, unless you made a catastrophic error like driving into one of the poles in the crank. You have to go upstairs and wait for the proctor to return their results, and then you have to wait even longer for the clerks to give you your results. However, you can usually imply from his feedback that you fucked up. Today, in regards to my low gearing approach (I never went higher than third, which is what I usually use for 50 km/h), he told me to please practice more with using higher gears, especially in the two sections where I should have especially done so. By the term "please practice more", you can imply that he means that you'll be doing it again. So in real terms, it means that I had failed the driving test. AGAIN. All because of not using the right gears.

That wasn't all. Everyone else failed, too. Two of the foreigners were from Iwaki, which is farther away from Fukushima City than I am. One guy had failed the driving test three times before, so today was his fourth failure. (And that was in an AT car.) The other guy, according to his test score card, actually failed the written exam first, so he wasn't allowed to take the driving test until he passed the written exam. Today was his second failure. There were also a pair of ladies, one Chinese woman and her translator, plus the Chinese woman's toddler son, there. It was her first attempt at the driving test, and her first failure. Hope that kid likes hanging around this place, I thought to myself. He's going to be seeing the inside of it a LOT over the next few months.

But honestly, if that's really the only thing that I needed to fix, then it probably means that the next time should be my last time. (I'm probably jinxing myself at this point, but fuck it.) My test is next Friday. I start work next Thursday, so that means that I'm now officially taking time from work to go get this done. Not to mention that this first month is my probation month. Yippie yahee for me.

And finally, when I got the e-mail from my foreign personnel advisor confirming the next appointment, she also added this factoid in:

According to the staff, security verification is
the most important point to pass the test.
(You may be told the same point every time.)

Yeah, I don't know what the fuck that means either. I've been giving them all the right documents and forms, and I always do an inspection around the car before I start the actual test. I've just about had it with that fucking center.

-wp