Renewing a Driver's License

After 3 years, your first license expires and you will need to renew it. You will get a notice in the mail 2 months before your license expires. The process is actually really easy, it just takes time... 3 hours!

Bring something to do.

Going to the License Center

Get yourself to the License Center. In theory there are two license-renewal times a day; however, first time renewals involve an extra step (the lecture) which is only available in the afternoon. The afternoon time slot starts at 1pm and is available Monday to Friday and Sunday. You should arrive 10-15 minutes early. You'll see a whole bunch of people sitting together just inside the main door (slightly to the right), maybe 100 or more. Just sit with them. An official will send you in groups to the first counter where you pay, they'll ask if you want to pay extra for things like safety driver clubs and such, just say no.

After you have paid, you fill out your name and address on a form, do an eye test, then get your photo taken. That takes about 45 minutes. After that the pain begins. You then have a 2 hour lecture to sit through. The lecture includes 2 videos. This is indeed a painfully slow experience but its something you'll have to do. At one stage they'll hand out a 27 question "test". They have a choice of languages: Japanese and Portuguese. The test doesn't matter anyway as it's a self-test and you don't have to hand it back. I left mine blank, or you could just circle random answers, it really doesn't matter.

Once your 2 hours of hell are up, they stamp your form and you can go downstairs, get your license and leave. You're done.