{"id":800,"date":"2025-08-25T09:04:26","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T09:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/?p=800"},"modified":"2025-08-25T09:04:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T09:04:26","slug":"renewing-motor-vehicle-inspection-in-tokyo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/2025\/08\/25\/renewing-motor-vehicle-inspection-in-tokyo\/","title":{"rendered":"Renewing motor-vehicle inspection in Tokyo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I managed to renew the shaken (vehicle inspection) for my motorbike at Shinagawa by myself. Staff were very friendly and accommodating. Total cost in 2025 for a 1250cc motorcycle was \u00a514,360.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>3 years after purchasing a new vehicle, and then every 2 years after that, every vehicle in Japan has to pass a motor-vehicle inspection, or <em>shaken<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>My R1250GSA was up for getting it renewed, and you can either pay someone to do it for a significant markup, or try to do it yourself. I opted to give it a shot.<\/p>\n<p>Note that from 2025 onwards, the <em>shaken<\/em> can be renewed from 2 months prior to it expiring. Don&#8217;t leave it to the last minute as if they find a fault you will need time to get it fixed.<\/p>\n<p>I basically followed the instructions in this very excellent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joanmira.com\/blog\/how-to-pass-the-motorcycle-shaken-inspection-in-tokyo-by-yourself\/\">blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>First, register an account on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reserve.naltec.go.jp\/web\/ap-entry?slinky___page=forward:A1001_01\">www.reserve.naltec.go.jp<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Next apply for an appointment. I chose the <a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/maps\/unp3ybW6kfAWJb2f6\">Shinagawa Vehicle Inspection Center<\/a> even though it&#8217;s not my closest inspection station since in my experience they deal with a lot of foreigners and many staff can even speak some english. This is also where I go to renew my drivers license.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, gather all the documents you will need &#8211; make sure they are the originals, and not copies!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>JCI Inspection Certificate (\u81ea\u52d5\u8eca\u691c\u67fb\u8a3c) &#8211; this is the old one you should have gotten when you registered the vehicle.<\/li>\n<li>Compulsory Insurance Certificate (\u81ea\u8ce0\u8cac\u4fdd\u967a\u8a3c\u66f8) &#8211; this is the old one you should have gotten when you registered the vehicle.<\/li>\n<li>Road tax payment receipt (\u81ea\u52d5\u8eca\u7a0e\u7d0d\u7a0e\u8a3c\u660e\u66f8) &#8211; this is the receipt for the annual road tax paid to the city you live in.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After making an appointment I got an email with instructions including links to some YouTube videos showing the typical process for both cars and motorbikes.<\/p>\n<p>On the day of the appointment I went to the Inspection Center and there&#8217;s a small section where bikes park right next to the stairs of &#8220;C&#8221; building, which is where I had to go first. Counter 7, to be precise. If you turn up before the time you take a small numbered chip to get your place in the queue. I guess otherwise you just queue up.<\/p>\n<p>So I had managed to get everything right, except that the JCI Inspection Certificate I had was not the correct one. I&#8217;m not entirely sure what the difference was since I thought the kanji all matched, but I had an A4 printed sheet whereas the official Inspection Certificate is a smallish blue heavy paper (thin card) thing. Long story short, I had to go back home and look for it.<\/p>\n<p>Note also that you can&#8217;t make a new appointment for the same day!<\/p>\n<p>I just went back on the same day trusting good luck and the guy at Counter 7 was very nice and just slotted me right in. I got a record sheet on which I had to write my name, then had to go to &#8220;D&#8221; building Counter 14 to pay for the inspection (5,600\u00a5) and then counter 15 to pay for the Compulsory Insurance (8,760\u00a5).<\/p>\n<p>Note that they don\u00b4t accept card payment &#8211; cash only!<\/p>\n<p>After that it was back to C-7 where they had just gone on lunch-break..<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A short while later&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After checking that I paid for everything and various stamps, I got sent to Lane 2 with my motorbike for the actual inspection. Looks like a BMW dealer was renewing shaken for their customers as a whole line of R1250GSA&#8217;s were queuing up behind me &#8211; which may have been a benefit as I was holding up the queue by not knowing what to do.<\/p>\n<p>First was an emissions test, basically just stick a probe into the exhaust and stand there for a bit until the display goes green.<\/p>\n<p>Next was a basic check &#8211; lights, indicators, horn, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Then I had to ride the bike onto a rolling road to test the brakes and speedo. A nice lady was helping me at this point as they had realised that I was really struggling with the <em>nihongo<\/em>.. but it all went pretty smoothly and I muddled through.<\/p>\n<p>After each check you have to scan the barcode of the record sheet.<\/p>\n<p>Once all the checks are done you hand in the record sheet to an inspection officer sitting in a little hut who gives a final stamp of approval. Presumably if something failed you get a stamp of disapproval&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Once done, it was back up to &#8220;C&#8221; block, but this time counter 6. An extremely short while later I got handed my new <em>shaken<\/em> and sticker for the number plate. Done!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s pretty easy to go and do your own shaken as long as you have a couple of hours of time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[93,41],"tags":[96,42],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":802,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions\/802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}