How to Convert Your Foreign Driver's License to a Japanese One: The Gaimen Kirikae (外免切替) Guide

If you already drive in your home country, you may assume your license carries over to Japan with a little paperwork. It can — but the procedure is stricter than most expect, and it tightened further on 1 October 2025, when an amendment to the Enforcement Regulations of the Road Traffic Act changed how address is verified, how many questions the written check contains, and how the driving check is graded.

The procedure is called gaimen kirikae (外免切替), literally "foreign license switching." It is not a fresh license course but an application for a Japanese license covering the vehicles your foreign license already permits, with part of the examination waived. For some that means a morning of paperwork; for others, a 50-question written test and a driving check booked months ahead. Everything below comes from the National Police Agency, prefectural police, or the Japan Automobile Federation, and because licensing is run prefecture by prefecture, differences are flagged where they matter.

Driving in Japan before you convert

First, a prior question: may you drive right now? The National Police Agency sets out three, and only three, documents that permit it. A Japanese license. An International Driving Permit issued under the Geneva Convention. Or a foreign license from a jurisdiction that issues no Geneva-Convention permits but whose licensing system is recognised as equivalent to Japan's, with a Japanese translation from a body designated in the relevant cabinet order — a route the National Police Agency states covers licenses from Switzerland, Germany, France, Belgium, Monaco and Taiwan.

The time limit is where people get caught. A permit or recognised foreign license lets you drive for one year from the day you landed in Japan, or the remaining validity of the document, whichever is shorter — and the permit is itself valid one year from issue, so twelve months is the practical ceiling for most new arrivals.

The three-month rule

The condition that disqualifies more applicants than any other is deceptively short. The National Police Agency states that, after obtaining the foreign license, you must have stayed in that country or region for a cumulative total of three months or more, evidenced by a passport bearing entry and exit stamps or equivalent records.

Two words carry the weight. "After obtaining" — residence before the issue date does not count, which is why people who took a driving course while home on a short holiday are frequently turned away. "Cumulative" — the three months need not be continuous, so separate visits can be added together. The burden of evidencing each stay is yours.

Other eligibility conditions

The figures below are published by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department for its own procedure; confirm them with the authority covering your registered address.

Age. At least 17 years and 6 months; ordinary motorcycle from 16, medium from 20, large from 21. For regular and semi-medium licenses, the license itself is issued from age 18.

Eyesight. Regular and motorcycle licenses need 0.7 or better with both eyes and 0.3 in each; where one eye is below 0.3 or absent, the other needs a 150-degree field of view and 0.7 vision. Semi-medium, medium and large need 0.8 with both eyes and 0.5 in each, plus a depth perception test on a three-rod apparatus, examined three times, with an average error of 2 centimetres or less. Tokyo warns that aptitude test fees are not refunded if you fail it.

Residence registration. The National Police Agency states that foreign nationals not subject to the Basic Resident Registration Act cannot, in principle, apply, other than in exceptional cases defined by law — principally holders of identification issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In practice, you need to be a registered resident with a residence card; short-term visitors are outside the scheme.

Categories and history. Tokyo states you may apply for only one category at a time, except where a license from an exempt country covers two or more, or where you hold an expired Japanese license plus a valid foreign one covering the same categories. A large or medium license also requires that you already hold a regular or semi-medium one.

The two tracks

This fork determines whether your conversion takes days or months. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department publishes a list of 29 countries and regions whose license holders are exempt from both the knowledge and skills confirmations:

Iceland, Ireland, the United States of America (limited to Ohio, Oregon, Colorado, Virginia, Hawaii, Maryland and Washington), 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 and Taiwan.

Separately, Tokyo lists the United States (limited to Indiana) as exempt from the skills confirmation only. Everyone else takes both — including holders from most of Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, mainland China and most U.S. states.

The list also affects where you go. In Tokyo, the Fuchu and Samezu testing centres handle licenses from any country, while the Koto centre handles only the 29 exempt countries and regions. Turning up at the wrong centre wastes a booking slot.

Documents you must bring

The National Police Agency lists the documents required nationally; Tokyo publishes the same list in English with more detail. Both stress one point: bring originals — photocopies are not accepted.

• The application form and health questionnaire.
• Your foreign license, currently valid. Tokyo requires the physical original and states that an electronic license alone is not acceptable. Bring past licenses from the same country, and proof of the acquisition date for each category if the card omits it.
• A Japanese translation from a designated body (next section).
• A copy of your resident record (juminhyo) showing the special notes — for foreign nationals, the items recorded under Article 30-45 of the Basic Resident Registration Act, including nationality or region, residence status, period of stay and its expiry date, and residence card number. It must be issued within the last six months and must not display your My Number; if it does, you will be asked to black it out at the counter.
• Identity verification, such as a My Number Card or passport, and passports evidencing your cumulative three months after acquisition, expired ones included. Applicants with multiple nationalities must bring passports from every country.
• An application photograph, 3.0 cm by 2.4 cm, taken within six months, no hat or head covering except for religious or medical reasons, facing forward, plain background, bust shot — one per category.
• Any Japanese license or My Number Card storing license details you already hold, and the fees.

Tokyo also states that required documents vary by issuing country or region, and by the year of acquisition, any history of license expiry, and how you obtained the license. It publishes a country-by-country list in Japanese, English and Chinese; read the entry for your own country and check your prefecture's equivalent.

The Japanese translation

You cannot translate your own license, and neither can a translation agency of your choosing. The National Police Agency specifies who may:

• The foreign authority that issued the license, or that country's consular mission in Japan.
• A foreign body notified to the National Public Safety Commission and accepted as appropriate — the National Police Agency names the Taiwan-Japan Relations Association for Taiwanese licenses and the German Automobile Federation (ADAC) for German ones.
• Bodies designated by the National Public Safety Commission: the Japan Automobile Federation (JAF), ZIPLUS Co., Ltd. and the Association for Visiting Driver Support (ALADDIN).

The National Police Agency adds a warning worth repeating: sworn or court-appointed translators abroad are not included. A certified translation from your home country, however official it looks, will not be accepted. Coverage differs by provider, so check which one handles your country.

JAF publishes its fees directly. Following a revision effective 1 July 2026, a translation issued for converting to a Japanese license costs 6,600 yen including 10% consumption tax; one issued for the different purpose of driving in Japan with it attached to a foreign license remains 6,000 yen, tax-exempt. JAF accepts online applications, states that the application site can only be accessed from a network inside Japan, and gives an issuing time of roughly one to two weeks, varying by country, license contents and handling office. Fees, turnaround and extra country-specific documents vary by provider.

Booking your appointment

Conversion is by appointment, and how you book varies by prefecture more than any other part of the process.

Tokyo operates web reservation through the Metropolitan Police Department's online procedures portal, open to applicants who stayed in the issuing country for a cumulative three months or more and who live, including temporarily, within Tokyo. A telephone route is reserved for a narrower group: holders of diplomatic and other identification cards with their families, and applicants under the Specified Skilled Worker framework, where the booking is in principle made by a staff member of the employing company. Those callers contact the testing centre between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Osaka works differently. Reservations are taken by telephone only, on specified days for a defined booking window, and Osaka Prefectural Police state plainly that telephone support is in Japanese only. Applicants from exempt countries and everyone else are handled on different schedules and at different centres, Kadoma and Komyoike, and from 19 January 2026 Kadoma switched exempt-country applicants from telephone to counter booking. A reservation once made cannot be changed.

The knowledge confirmation

If your license was not issued in an exempt jurisdiction, you take a knowledge confirmation (知識確認). This is where the 1 October 2025 amendment bites hardest. Tokyo sets out the changes: illustration questions were abolished; the number of questions changed from 10 to 50; the pass standard changed from 7 or more correct out of 10 to 45 or more out of 50; and it is held once a day, in the afternoon only. The old standard allowed three mistakes out of ten; the new one allows five out of fifty, raising required accuracy from 70% to 90%.

On language, the news is better. Tokyo states that the knowledge confirmation questions used for foreign license conversion are available in 20 languages: English, Spanish, Persian, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, Thai, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Khmer, Nepali, Burmese, Mongolian, Ukrainian, Sinhala, Urdu, Arabic and Hindi. Availability is not uniform: Tokyo cautions that the days each language can be taken, and the centre offering it, differ by license type and language.

The skills confirmation

The skills confirmation (技能確認) is a practical driving check on a closed course at a testing centre. Two things catch applicants out.

First, it cannot be taken on the day you apply. Tokyo states that it is by reservation only, and its English guidance goes further: a skills confirmation is usually scheduled three to four months after you book the slot.

Second, the standard was raised. As part of the 1 October 2025 amendment, Tokyo states that tasks such as passing a pedestrian crossing were added and that the assessment criteria were tightened; Osaka Prefectural Police describe the same reform as tightening address verification, knowledge confirmation and skills confirmation together. The check rewards the Japanese examination style: deliberate visual checks, signalling at the prescribed points, and caution at crossings. Habits formed over years of confident driving elsewhere are what tends to cost marks.

Fees

Tokyo publishes the following fees.

Add the translation — 6,600 yen including tax at JAF as of 1 July 2026, with other designated providers setting their own fees — plus the resident record copy, photographs and travel. Confirm amounts with your own prefecture.

Your Japanese license afterwards

Validity. Tokyo states that a newly obtained license is valid from the date of issue until one month after your third birthday thereafter, and that the colour band is green for a license obtained by conversion. At renewal, depending on how long you have held a license and your violation record, the band may change to blue or gold and validity may extend to five years. For foreign nationals, the nationality field is not printed on the face of the card; the recorded contents can be read with an IC license reader.

Beginner's mark and motorcycle passengers. Tokyo states that beginner drivers must display the beginner's mark (初心者標識) on the front and rear of the vehicle for one year from the issue date, and that accumulating 3 or more penalty points in that period — or 4 or more where a single incident carried 3 — requires taking the beginner-driver course. Its English guidance sets out thresholds measured against your stay in the issuing country after acquisition: three months or more to convert at all; one year or more to be exempt from the beginner's-mark obligation; one year or more to carry a motorcycle passenger on ordinary roads; and three years or more on expressways. For the motorcycle thresholds, time in the issuing country and in Japan may be combined.

Keeping it current. Any change of address, name or nationality must be reported promptly at a police station, renewal centre or testing centre — accurate municipal registration matters here as it does for opening a bank account.

Where applications fail

Tokyo publishes the circumstances in which an application may be rejected after screening:

• You already hold a driver's license (provisional licenses excepted), have passed a test at a centre outside Tokyo without yet receiving the license, or have lost yours without obtaining a replacement.
• Your license is suspended, or you are disqualified from taking a license examination.
• You — including as an International Driving Permit holder — committed a serious traffic offence such as driving without a license, driving under the influence of alcohol, a joint dangerous act, or failure to give aid after an accident.

Beyond these formal grounds, the recurring practical failures are consistent: automated gates left no stamps to evidence the three months; the resident record is older than six months or still shows the My Number; a photocopy was brought instead of an original; the translation came from an unauthorised translator; or the foreign license expired during the wait for the skills confirmation.

If you are working in Japan

For many foreign workers this is not a lifestyle question. Driving is a working requirement in agriculture, construction, logistics and parts of nursing care, and in much of regional Japan it is simply how people get to work. If you are weighing a role outside a major city — the sort covered in our guides to agriculture and construction work — the licensing timeline belongs in your planning alongside salary and housing. Ask any prospective employer whether a license is required or merely convenient, and whether they allow weekday time off for the appointment. Our job offer checklist covers the wider questions worth asking before you sign.

Frequently asked questions