[Nyororin]

I took the normal driving course Japanese people take before taking the test, and passed with a perfect score on the first try. It`s a matter of knowing the rules and knowing what they are testing. The laws and rules are different here than elsewhere, so even if you are a perfect driver in your home country chances are you won`t pass the test here if you didn`t look into it well. Most people seem to assume that as they`ve been driving for so many years that they`ll have no trouble - and fail miserably.

The checking under the car, etc, isn`t a silly rule - nor are any of the others. They don`t test on just what you`d do on a normal day hopping in your car - they test for a series of different circumstances to see if you know how to handle them. Not just an average day. I`ll restate the same thing here as I always say when the topic of the test being silly - If you can`t be bothered to go through the motions when you know you have to and are being tested on them... Who knows what you won`t bother to do when you`re not being tested.

You check the car so that they can see that you know how to do a basic check of your tires and lights, and then a basic engine check of oil and the like. If you don`t know how to do such a basic test, the thinking is that you wouldn`t know how to do basic care of your car and are not ready for a license.
The actual vehicle test is normal driving, uphill stop - shifting without rolling back when you release the brake, downhill shifting (don`t ride your brakes), turning, parallel and back-in parking, proper turning checks, etc etc. Of course that is on top of a long written test.

They will test you on more things if you have not taken a driving course because the driving courses have their own tests. When you pass the driving course test (which is also extremely strict - the longer you attend the more money they make so there is little incentive to be easy on you) you get a certificate that counts toward the driving center test. They still test you, but I understand that the number of things they test is lower.

Anyway - pedestrians always have the right of way. Bicycles are pedestrians if they`re on the sidewalk, and vehicles if they`re on the road. I believe that in this area the law puts them on the sidewalk (it`s a prefecture by prefecture thing) so in Aichi they`re almost always pedestrians.

There is only one set of circumstances in which the fault of an accident would lie partially in the pedestrian... It is sudden jaywalking when there is a crosswalk within so many meters. If there is a crosswalk but they leap out in front of your car with no warning, close enough to a crosswalk that you should be focusing on it to watch for people wanting to cross... The fault of the accident lies 20+% with the pedestrian.