Shaken: How Much Does it Cost?

If you don't have time to do your shaken yourself, you can do what a majority of Japanese car owners do: Ask a business to take care of the process for you.

Although figures for the process have long been quoted online as something between 100,000 and 200,000 yen (hell, even we once did), these numbers were very different from my experience. For my car, a 2.6L, 1400 kg white plate in good working order, shaken through a big box store (e.g. Autobacs, Yellow Hat) cost 72,000 yen.

Japanese Shaken Vehicle Inspection at a Shop

Earlier this year, Dom put together an awesome and very comprehensive shaken (車検) guide explaining how to get Japan's mandatory vehicle safety inspections done by yourself at your regional Land Transport Bureau.

I got excited, printed up all the necessary forms, and started scanning my calendar for a date, only to realize I'd arranged my schedule in such a fashion that there'd be no way for me to visit my bureau on a weekday to get the tests done.

Renewing Shaken After it Expires

Shaken (車検), the mandatory vehicle safety and emissions test in Japan, was recently addressed in a series of posts on AccessJ comprising Dom's excellent self-shaken guide. To keep your car on the road in Japan (as a non-commercial driver, that is), you'll have to have a shaken inspection done on it every 2 years, your own car's expiration date indicated by a square sticker top-and-center on the front windshield.

When a car's shaken expires, it is not legal to drive on public roads in Japan. (So... pretty much everywhere.)


...But slip-ups happen, right? What if you forgot about your shaken until it was too late? Or what about cars in used-car lots? Surely the dealers aren't keeping all their cars up to date until they're sold?* A car is illegal to drive without shaken, but it's not illegal to own such a car, so there must be some way to get the shaken renewed, right??

Well, fear not! There is a way to restore road-worthiness to that 1992 Suzuki Alto whose shaken you forgot about while you were vacationing the summer away in Thailand. And we'll tell you how:

User Shaken: Japanese Car Vocabulary

This is a list of vocabulary you will probably need during the self shaken tunnel test. It's mostly Japanified English, so it shouldn't be too taxing, but you should be able to follow basic commands and anticipate slight modifications to the phrases listed here.

For the paperwork, you'll also need to know the name of all the documents and which bits to write where. Click here for that guide.

User-Shaken: The Test Shed

This part of the series covers the running and visual tests performed at the user shaken centre.

User Shaken: Paperwork

This is a guide for all the paperwork necessary for the User Shaken. It includes descriptions of what to take with you, what to buy/ask for at the shaken centre, images and guides to completing the documents, and a .pdf guide to print and take with you for reference.

This is part of our ongoing user-shaken series.

User Shaken: Book a Test

To do the self-shaken, you need to pre-book a timeslot. This doesn't seem to be binding, but rather an attempt at limiting crowds at certain times. You can come back later in the day if anything extra needs doing without making another appointment.

All parts of Japan use one website for the booking, so here's a guide to it.

User-Shaken - DIY MOT Guide

As I covered last week, the shaken process can be very expensive. You can drastically cut that cost (by around two thirds) by doing the thing yourself.

AccessJ's comprehensive guide starts today. Check back every week for the whole thing. Follow our RSS feed, Twitter or Facebook accounts for updates.