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The story
A thread titled “Nobody but old people have a driver’s license these days” popped up on 5ch’s NanG (Everything Live, General) board, kicking off a debate that started from talk about Japan’s Financial Services Agency scrapping driver’s licenses as a form of ID verification. When one poster cited family financial circumstances as a reason for not getting a license, replies pushed back one after another with “normally your parents pay for it” and “it’s weird to make your kid pay for it themselves,” splitting opinion over who should actually foot the bill for getting a license. Posts self-reporting their own income and job to back up their arguments were common, and the thread devolved into a back-and-forth over personal anecdotes.
What people said
7 Anonymous (Still Kicking) 2026/10/09(Fri) 17:26:52.42 ID:uUh28TKw0
Nobody but old people have a driver's license these days
You just lost the parent lottery ("oyagacha" — slang for being dealt bad parents by chance), plain and simple.
Never heard of it going any other way.
Most people get it around 19 or 20, no?
The slow ones get it by sophomore year of college at the latest.
Sounds like your home life is a mess, so yeah, the loser rate's probably high there.
What kind of logic is that?
If you don't drive, you don't need one.
If that didn't happen for you… well, we can guess why.
That would've made sense back when there was no other ID.
Now that we've got My Number cards, you don't need one.
Normally people don't say "normal" in situations like this.
And yakuza too.
No way…
Well, this is NanG, after all…
It's your first step into society — why hesitate, lol
Whether you go to college is something you decide for yourself.
Don't tell me you're grown and still assuming it's your parents' call to send you there?
So how are you paying for it? In a normal household the parents just pay, no scholarships needed.
At this point I'm thinking you and I live in completely different worlds.
Seriously, be grateful to your parents.
Without a license you can't land a decent job.
What do you even do for work?
Maybe some kids turn it down even when their parents offer.
That was me — I was getting an allowance from home, so I just did a short-term part-time job to cover the license myself.
Even in households that can't afford it, decent people bow their heads, borrow the money from their parents, and pay it back bit by bit with part-time wages.
I work in IT.
My annual income's over 10 million yen (roughly $65,000+), so I'd call that a decent job.
Doesn't sound like someone with a decent job to me — you keep changing your backstory to match whatever reply you're responding to.
Nah, I've seen households where paying for a private university plus living alone already maxes them out — the license just isn't in the budget.
You can sort it into 4 patterns:
won't pay, doesn't get it
won't pay, gets it anyway
will pay, doesn't get it
will pay, gets it
If you want to argue "no license = no money at home," you need to disprove the "will pay, doesn't get it" case.
It's not like paying automatically gets you the license either.
My parents covered my license fees too, but I couldn't handle the brutal training and quit halfway through — took the 300,000 yen (about $2,000) refund and blew it at pachinko.
For what it's worth, I'm in my 20s making over 10 million yen a year.
Honestly, the real world was easier than driving school.
That's because you lack the brains and judgment to actually pass the license test.
Then we need a fifth pattern.
Besides "doesn't get it" and "gets it," you're missing "can't get it."
Either way, you still have to disprove the group that could get a license but doesn't.
Can't help it if you're old.
Is that you, Ryoko Hirosue? (the Japanese actress who reportedly surrendered her license after a recent incident)
She said something like that not long ago.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
It’s worth noting that the claim which sparked the thread — that Japan’s Financial Services Agency is scrapping driver’s licenses as a method of ID verification — was only backed by one poster’s say-so within the thread itself, and this article treats it as unverified information. The conversation gradually drifted toward the idea that “the reason people skip getting a license is family financial hardship,” but there’s no objective basis for directly linking license ownership to household income; other explanations, like local transportation conditions or simple personal preference, are just as plausible. As for the claim that “normally parents pay for the license,” the burden of tuition and living costs varies by household and can’t be generalized. Posts self-reporting income and occupation to argue their case were common in the thread, but these amount to subjective exchanges built on unverifiable self-reports, with no real statistical backing — worth keeping in mind while reading.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (NanG) thread “[Sad News] NanG posters: “Nobody but old people have a driver’s license these days” wwwwwwww.”
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