Last updated: 2026-06-10
MenkyoQuest (menkyoquest.com) is a free web app for practicing the Japanese driving license written test. This page describes our purpose, the editorial process behind our questions and explanations, the team operating the site, and the relevant disclaimers.
Updates
- 2026-06-10 — Launched the Indonesian version (/id). Along with all 691 quiz questions, explanations, and character dialogues, the entire site — the foreign-license conversion guide, glossary, road-sign list, and test-center information for all 47 prefectures — is now available in Indonesian. The site now supports three languages: Japanese, English, and Indonesian.
- 2026-06-04 — Added a “Driving Camp Packing List” article to the Japanese licensing guide — from must-have documents to comfortable-driving shoes and handy items for shared rooms — opening with a four-panel mascot comic. We also began including Amazon product links to helpful study materials and travel goods (see the Privacy Policy for details on advertising).
- 2026-06-02 — Greatly expanded the Japanese “How to Get Your License” guide into 16 articles covering the whole journey — comparing driving camp vs. commuting, costs, the fastest route, and choosing a school, then on through enrollment, stage 1, the provisional license, stage 2, the graduation test, the full-license exam, and test day. Each article opens with a four-panel mascot comic to make the key points easy to grasp.
- 2026-05-30 — Added a short character dialogue to all 691 question pages, so you can grasp each answer's key point through a quick chat between the mascots. The licensing guide, glossary, road-sign list, and license-conversion guide now also open with a brief chat that summarizes the page.
- 2026-05-28 — Tagged every question with its driving school curriculum topic (Stage 1 with 14 topics + Stage 2 with 16 topics) and added a curriculum reference badge under each explanation. Also added 30 new questions covering six previously under-covered topics — priority for emergency vehicles, passing oncoming vehicles on narrow roads, blind spots, driver aptitude, towing, and route planning — bringing the total from 661 to 691 questions.
- 2026-05-23 — Redrew all four mascot characters and refreshed them with a brand-new design.
- 2026-05-21 — Fixed six sign questions in Chapter 1 that were showing the wrong sign image (railroad crossing, school, slippery road, falling rocks, parking permitted, stopping permitted). Thanks to the reader who reported it.
1. Purpose
We give people preparing for the Japanese driving license written test (provisional and full license) a free, ad-light environment to practice as many times as they need.
All practice questions are sourced from the National Police Agency's official Rules of the Road, and our chapter structure mirrors that rulebook. Each question carries a source_reference pointing back to the exact section, accessible from the explanation modal after each answer.
2. Source — Rules of the Road (National Police Agency)
Every question is based on the National Police Agency's Rules of the Road, published as a notification of the National Public Safety Commission. Under Article 13(2) of the Japanese Copyright Act, the Rules of the Road are public notifications and are not subject to copyright, so quoting and adapting them into practice questions is permitted.
When the rules are amended, we update the affected questions first. The last-updated date appears at the top of this page and in the metadata of each chapter page.
- Source: Rules of the Road (National Public Safety Commission notification)
- Chapter structure: matches the 11 chapters of the rulebook
- Question formats: true/false and multiple-choice
Third-party reference policy: Our questions and explanations are grounded exclusively in the NPA Rules of the Road (PD) and the Road Traffic Act (PD). We do not reference, copy from, or paraphrase third-party practice-question collections (Lease Japan, Road Ready / Ziplus, JAF practice quizzes, JapanDL, GitHub-hosted question banks, etc.). A topic list compiled for license-conversion candidates (docs/外免切替_過去問.md) is used internally only as a coverage map — to decide which sections of the official rulebook to reinforce — and never as a source of question wording or explanation text.
3. How AI fits into our explanations
Explanations are produced with a human-in-the-loop pipeline: editorial team members read the rulebook, draft prompts for Claude (Anthropic), review what the model writes, and ship only after manual correction. We never publish raw model output.
In detail:
- Extract articles and sections from the official PDF into structured JSON (in-house tooling)
- Generate true/false and multiple-choice draft questions per section with Claude
- Have Claude draft each explanation, citing the corresponding section of the rulebook
- Read every practice question ourselves, fixing errors and ambiguity
- For the English version under
/en, translate with Claude and review key terminology (provisional vs. full license, jokō, etc.) for consistency
AI output is fallible. If you spot a typo, mistranslation, or an unclear explanation, please email us — we'll fix it quickly.
The final explanations are © the MenkyoQuest editorial team. Anthropic's Claude is used as a drafting tool under our editorial review; Anthropic does not hold copyright in the output (per Anthropic's commercial Terms of Service, the user retains rights in outputs they generate). See our Terms of Use for the full statement.
The English edition (/en) launched on 2026-05-11 as part of the Phase 1A + 1B multilingual rollout. See the Privacy Policy §9 revision history for full version changes.
4. About the team
- Site name
- MenkyoQuest
- Domain
- www.menkyoquest.com
- Operator
- MenkyoQuest editorial team (a small, independently operated editorial team)
- Location
- Japan
- Contact
- contact@menkyoquest.com
- Launched
- 2026
Please use the email above for all enquiries — content corrections, translation feedback, or anything else about the site. We deliberately do not accept personally identifiable information through other channels (e.g. social media DMs).
5. Disclaimer
This service does not guarantee that you will pass the written test, and it is not the sole authoritative source for Japanese traffic law. For the latest official information, please consult the National Police Agency's Rules of the Road and the local driving license testing centre or designated driving school in your prefecture.
The MenkyoQuest team is not responsible for any damages arising from use of this service. For issues that arise after clicking through an affiliate advertisement, please contact that advertiser directly (see Privacy Policy §3).
6. Related links
7. Image attribution (road sign SVGs)
Of the 35 road-sign SVGs used on this site, 25 are derived from the Wikimedia Commons collection of Japanese road signs (under PD-Japan-exempt or PD-self licenses). The remaining 10 were drawn from scratch by the MenkyoQuest team following the Road Sign Order specifications and released into the public domain — four traffic signals, five road-marking icons, and one no-pedestrians sign.
All of them depict the standard forms prescribed by the Road Sign Order (a National Police Agency notification) and are not subject to copyright under Article 13(2) of the Japanese Copyright Act. The per-file attribution list (Wikimedia source URLs etc.) is maintained in tools/sign_assets_index.md in the source repository.
- Regulatory signs (13 from Wikimedia) — e.g.
max-speed.svg(323),min-speed.svg(324),no-entry.svg(303),no-parking.svg(316),one-way.svg(326-A-R),stop.svg(330-A) - Warning signs (9 from Wikimedia) — e.g.
warning-intersection.svg(201-A),warning-curve.svg(204-R),warning-railroad.svg(207-A),warning-narrow.svg(212) - Indication and guide signs (3 from Wikimedia) —
parking-permitted.svg(駐車可),stopping-permitted.svg(404),pedestrian-crossing.svg(407-A) - Self-authored (10, PD-released) — four signal icons (
signal-red/yellow/green/arrow-right), five road-marking icons (stop line, pedestrian-crossing ahead, no-overtaking, center line, do-not-pass), andno-pedestrians.svg