These three were my favorites:

• how do you pronounce falck

• kanji falck
• how to falck my self

The first two of which I consider myself competent to answer.

Falck ending in ‘ck’ is a fancier spelling of the word ‘falk’, which is also a surname, and is the Scandinavian cognate word for the English ‘falcon’. So a falk, and thus a falck, is a falcon. Falk and Falck are not very common but not too rare either last names in especially Denmark and Sweden, but also Norway and Finland. Falck is considerably less common than Falk.

Many Scandinavians probably associate Falck with the Danish company Falck A/S, who run rescue services, ambulances, security services, etc.

Falck, as well as falk, is pronounced with a short, pure, basic vowel sound that is spelt with an ‘a’ in all sane European languages. The Japanese あ is the same sound. For English analogy, it’s like the ‘u’ in ‘up’. So it’s not pronounced as ‘folk’ – the vowel sound is different and shorter. The ‘f’ is like you’d expect in English, and the ‘lk’ is pronounced like I think many Americans would pronounce it in ‘folk’ as well, but not like most Brits who pronounce ‘folk’ the same way as they pronounce ‘fork’. In other words, you can distinctly hear both the ‘l’ and the ‘k’. And it shouldn’t be confused with ‘Flack’.

Falck in kanji, i.e. the Japanese characters based on Chinese characters, as well as of course how to spell falk in kanji, depends of course a little bit on what kind of falcon you’re thinking of. I’ve always used 隼 to spell my name in kanji when it’s needed (or just for fun). Most often that’s when I’m hung over ordering pizza online and the web form absolutely insists that you enter your name as both kanji and reading (katakana/hiragana). So when when the pizza arrives, the receipt has my name as “隼 変陸” – and it has never failed.

Anyway, the kanji 隼 is read as hayabusa in Japanese and means peregrine falcon. I think the peregrine falcon is probably the coolest falcon out there, so it fits me well. Hayabusa is also the name of a space probe and a motorcycle, among other things. Here is the kanji for falcon and thus also falck/falk as a jpeg:

Feel free to print it out and bring it to your neighborhood tattooist for a cool falck/falk/falcon kanji tattoo! If you do use it to get some ink done, I humbly request that you include a link back to my site in the tattoo.

For that reason, I’ve always thought that I should have a cool 404 page. So one fine day, now more than a year ago (the 20th of October, 2007, to be precise), I took a picture of a road sign for the road numbered 404 in Japan. Interestingly, the location is right between the Imperial Palace and Tokyo Station, at the intersection with road number 1.

You can see the sign from another angle on this Streetview shot. The water you see there is the outer moat of the Imperial Palace, and the big avenue, road number 1, is Hibiya-dori.

So last week I finally got around to putting this up on my site. The 404 page just shows this image as a very low quality (i.e. very high compression) jpeg (same effect as the front page background – I like the look of low quality jpegs), with a random flickering that I think really transmits a feeling of brokenness.

So please go ahead and type in a non-existant url to have a look. Now I guess there are only a few dozen http status codes left to photograph…

Anyway, for those of us who are from a civilized part of the world, it’s actually a very simple task! You will need to prepare five things: Your valid driver’s license from your home country, a certified translation of your driver’s license, a photo, money, and a passport that shows (through the universally accepted cryptographically secure method of embarkation/disembarkation stamps) that you’ve lived in your home country for at least three months since acquiring your driver’s license. Let’s go through these in detail.

1. Valid driver’s license
From your home country. I don’t know what happens if your driver’s license is from a country other than that of which you are a citizen. It’ll probably be trouble.

2. Certified translation of your driver’s license
You can get this at your country’s embassy in Japan. For Swedes, this translation service is available on Monday mornings, and costs 2,400 yen. They translate your driver’s license and give you a paper certifying the authenticity of the translation.

3. Driver’s license-sized photo 30×24 mm. Photo booths in Japan have an option for this size called “driver’s license”, or something. Interestingly, this photo is used for your application only, i.e. not on the driver’s license itself, so it doesn’t matter if you look like a dork in it (you don’t look like a dork anyway, do you?). They’ll take the photo for the actual driver’s license for you at the driver’s license office.

4. Money
It costs 4,500 yen. No so bad… You trade the money in for the equivalent in stamps at a place in the license office that sells stamps, as is common in Japanese bureaucracy.

5. Passport
You need a passport that shows you’ve been living (or at least being) in your home country (which we’re assuming is also the country that issued your driver’s license) for at least three months since the date when you acquired your driver’s license. If you haven’t been living there for three months, you can’t switch to a Japanese driver’s license. This is presumably to ensure that people don’t just run off to some other country where it’s cheaper and easier to get a driver’s license.

If you can show you’ve been living in your home country for at least one year since acquiring your driver’s license, you’ll be exempt from the one-year newbie period (which means mostly that you have to have silly stickers at the front and back of the car while you’re driving).

The procedure
Go to one of the driver’s license offices. There are three Driving License Testing and Issuing Centers in Tokyo, in Shinagawa-ku, Koto-ku, and Fuchu-shi. You can find the addresses, as well as some sparse information, on this page. For other prefectures, you’ll have to google it yourself. I went to the one in Fuchu, which can be reached by bus 91 from Chofu (Keio line), or by bus from Tama-reien station (also Keio) or Koganei station (on the Chuo line). The bus stop is called, revealingly, Shikenjo Seimon (試験場正門). They have lunch breaks so get there early.

Find the counter for changing a foreign driver’s license to a Japanese driver’s license. Look for the word 切り替え/切替 kirikae. It’s probably close, or the same as, the counter for international driver’s licenses. But you don’t want one of those. In the Fuchu office, it counter number 31 on the 3rd floor. Once there, present all your prepared materials at the counter. They will then take some time to examine your papers and make sure you’ve lived in your home country for the required amount of time since acquiring your driver’s license, etc.

Actually, from there they were very helpful and provided quite clear instructions on what to do (in Japanese). You’ll have to go buy a stamp, as mentioned above, and take an eye-test, which takes about 30 seconds and you’ll invariably pass it, take a photo for the actual driver’s license, and then input two 4-digit pin codes into a machine (smeg knows what they’re for). That whole procedure took about 5 minutes.

All of this took about one hour to complete. One of the few non-unpleasant encounters I’ve had with Japanese bureaucracy. Then you’re done, but I had to wait one and a half hour for the actual driver’s license card, which you can pick up at an adjacent office. So two and a half hours in total, from arriving at the office until having the license in my hand. Sweet.