From our other sites
The story
Chiba Prefectural Police announced on October 13 that they are suspending, for the time being, the driving license written test that had been offered in Vietnamese. The trigger was the discovery of images on a smartphone — identical to the actual exam questions — belonging to a 29-year-old Vietnamese woman who was taking the test at the Chiba Driver’s License Center. The exam won’t be used again until it’s remade starting on the 16th. On 5ch, opinions split between those questioning the very idea of offering driving tests in foreign languages, and those pointing out that the real problem is structural: unlike the Japanese-language version, which has multiple randomized question sets, the foreign-language version has only one fixed set — meaning it can be passed through pure memorization alone.
Chiba Prefectural Police Headquarters
After it came to light that questions from the Vietnamese-language driving license written test had leaked outside the organization, the Chiba Prefectural Police Driver Education Division announced on the 13th that it is temporarily suspending the Vietnamese-language written test. The suspension will remain in effect until the questions are remade, starting on the 16th.
According to the Driver Education Division, around 10:50 a.m. on the 13th, during a Vietnamese-language written test for a standard motorcycle license at the Chiba Driver’s License Center (Mihama Ward, Chiba City), an image of the exam questions was found in the photo folder of the smartphone belonging to a 29-year-old Vietnamese woman who was taking the test.
Source: sankei.com / Original article here
What people said
Then you'd never get a license in your whole life lol
If anything, English only should be enough
Japanese should be fine for that
Give me a break, you idiots
Yeah, exactly
You mean those shady cram-school-looking places, right?
Where you stay overnight the day before and cram
Is there a foreigner version of that kind of thing?
Leaks this easily
I've never once seen the newspapers raise that question. Is the media turning a blind eye too??
Exactly
All the road signs and electronic traffic boards in this country are written in Japanese, so if you can't read them you shouldn't be allowed to drive, period
Take it up with the LDP.
I failed the written test once,
bought a test-prep workbook sold near the test center,
and passed a few days later — so I can't really talk down to anyone.
Seriously, the written test is full of confusing garbage questions.
The driving school's own written lessons were easy,
but the test center's exam was full of trick questions designed to make you slip up.
That's exactly why it matters — to stop people who can't even grasp basic traffic rules like this from driving.
You only failed because you didn't understand what the question was really asking.
You memorize four picture cards, each showing four images — 16 total.
But it's already leaked all over the internet and in books too.
If someone actually has dementia they can't remember it anyway, so no problem lol
so even if you can't read the questions, anyone can pass just by memorizing where to mark the circles.
(Japanese has multiple versions, assigned randomly)
This has apparently been known among foreigners for a while, who mocked it as "a test idiots can pass."
In middle school PE class, we weren't allowed to actually play soccer until we passed a written test on the rules.
But word got around that the answers were just the 48 kana of the iroha poem, so everyone just memorized those — this reminds me of that.
Because the Public Safety Commission just reuses past questions
Background and points of debate
Japan’s driving license written test offers exams in several foreign languages — English, Chinese, Vietnamese, and others — to accommodate the growing number of foreign workers and their families. This particular case was limited to the Vietnamese-language test in Chiba Prefecture; it didn’t halt testing in other languages or other prefectures. Within the thread, two camps clashed: one arguing foreign-language testing should be scrapped outright, and another pointing out that the real flaw lies in the exam’s design — while the Japanese version randomly draws from multiple question patterns, the minor-language versions have only a single fixed pattern, meaning test-takers can pass just by memorizing where the correct answers fall. That second point is about a design flaw in how the exam is administered, a separate issue from whether foreign-language testing itself should exist — a distinction that’s easy to miss. It’s also worth noting that suspicion currently falls on a single test-taker; concluding that foreign applicants as a whole are cheating based on this one case would be premature.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “Driving test questions possibly obtained in advance — image found on Vietnamese woman’s phone, test suspended for now — Chiba.”
Leave a Reply