Japanese Number Plates Explained | A full guide of Japanese Number plates

number plates we've all got to have them whether we like it or not they come in many shapes and sizes and are a regulatory measure for all road-going vehicles all around the world after living in Japan for quite some time I learned that the Japanese number plate system was quite different compared to my home in South Australia so today I'm going to explain the different types of Japanese number plates and each of their sections and explain using examples what it all means so that next time you see one you'll know exactly what you're looking at in Japan there are two main types of vehicle classification K cars and regular cars K cars get a yellow plate with black letters and normal cars get a white plate with green letters but each of these plate types also has a commercial variant to indicate that the vehicle is not for private use these are often seen on trucks buses taxis Etc in these cases the colors of these plates are inverted commercial K cars get a black plate with yellow lettering and regular cars get a green plate with white lettering aside from these two plates there are two other exceptional number plates found within Japan one is the Cy number or temporary number this is a plate that is used if you want to drive a car that is not road legal temporarily these plates have a strict limit of 3 to 5 days depending on the circumstance they are often used with vehicles that are currently not roadworthy and need to pass a Shu and inspection often people will use these plates to drive to a mechanic to get their problems resolved or to drive to the inspection facility directly they are also often used when purchasing a new vehicle private ly as number plates are changed every time a car is registered to a new owner it is sometimes advised to stay clear of these cars as they may have mechanical defects and be dangerous to be driving around the other exceptional plate is Diplomat plates it features a blue plate with white letters and the kanji soor meaning outside AKA Foreigner this is used for foreign diplomats cars it is quite rare to see these plates however but I did get the chance to see one in Kor out the front of the French Embassy which is right next to the university unfortunately I did not take a picture at the time but here's a photo I found on the internet of one in addition to these special plates Japan does offer a selection of vanity plates usually these are location specific or they Mark a special event for example this plate is for the Osaka Expo scheduled for 2025 Japan also has the option for illuminated plates as well which is actually pretty Neo however Japan does not offer Custom Lettering on number plates only a combination of four numbers is possible but I'll get into this a little later on now that we've gone over the selection of number plates available let's move on to the specifics of what is actually written on the plates this actually turned out to be quite an interesting feature of Japanese number plates As I Shall now explain starting from the top left is the place name this is the location of the DMV that the plate was issued in in this case Shea to date there are 106 issuing bodies across the 47 prefixes of Japan interestingly some people choose to register their cars in more desirable locations for example rich people with high-end cars like to have a shinagawa number because that's a rich area of Tokyo there are also stereotypes of certain numbers like some people from certain towns are bad at driving or are very aggressive drivers this is an interesting little cultur aspect I learned during my time in Japan next is the classification number this is a series of three numbers the first digit tells us the classification of the car I've made a table here that shows what each digit means pause the video and take a look if you're interested for example these two cars both have a white plate but the Integra starts with a five indicating that it has a engine smaller than 2 L which it has a 1.8 so that checks out meanwhile the Supra starts with a three indicating it has an engine larger than 2 L which it has a 3 l so this also checks out this Land Cruiser and hux both start with a one because they're both classified as a truck while police cars and other special purpose Vehicles start with an eight the final two numbers in the series are purely sequential and don't sport any kind of meaning in the past number plates only had one single digit in the classification but in the early 1970s they ran out of combinations and had to start using two digits by 1998 they again ran out of combinations so they added a third digit this means that if you see a car with less than three digits it's actually quite rare for example I spotted this cappuccino at the cappuccino specialist shop and it had only two digits this is remarkable because anytime a car changes hand it gets a new number this means that you'll lose the two-digit number if you sell the car or buy a car with a two-digit number that means that this specific cappuccino is likely still owned by the original owner take a look at these two numbers do you notice something strange yep they've got letters in recent years they ran out of combinations again and they started using letters my guess is they just didn't have space for a fourth number the next section is the Cara text this again is quite an interesting one to to not it is used to differentiate the numbers but there are also certain Cara that are reserved for certain types of vehicle I have again prepared a table that outlines this interestingly US military personnel living in Japan are the only ones that can get English Carter text also because of this classifier it means you cannot simply rent a GTR roll up to daaku PA expecting to flex on everybody because all the car people will know straight away that you're driving a rental of course the remainder of the carer are also available to regular cars as possible combinations finally we move on to the license plate number this is a series of four numbers separated by hyphen in the middle interestingly if there's a blank number it's marked with a DOT although I've also seen zero be written on it as well and I'm not quite sure why if you do happen to know why please let me know in the comments but I would say 99% of the time it is marked with a DOT and I very rarely saw a zero as I previously mentioned there's no way to get custom letters on your number plate but you can pick your own number this has led to some creativity in custom numbers spelling out words phonetically for example this Mirage has the number 3610 to us English speakers we see nothing special about this number but in Japanese three is pronounced me six is pronounced Roku and 10 is pronounced ju so the number play kind of says miru or rather Mirage it's a pretty cool play on words here's a table I prepared of some other examples that can be used to spell words now because of these phonetic spellings some numbers are actually banned from being issued at all for example 42 or shini which means to death or 49 which is said as shiku or to run over definitely one you probably don't want to have written on your car so as you can see Japanese number plates are actually kind of fascinating I for one am not a number plate nerd or a number plate spotter but after spending quite a lot of time living amongst the car community in Japan I couldn't help but find learning about Japanese numbers kind of interesting and I hope you found it interesting too anyway thank you very much for watching the video I hope you found it interesting and informative as always if you enjoyed the video please Chuck me a like as it really helps small channels like mine grow and if you want to see more interesting car videos then hit subscribe as I've got many more videos planned for the future again thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: JayDM

Views: 263,732

Keywords: cars, sports cars, automotive, jaydm, jdm, japan, number plates, kyoto, tokyo, number, japanese

Id: iUjinYmYEjI

Length: 7min 31sec (451 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2024