Japan Driving Test Signs: 96 Flashcards on Yellow Diamonds, Blue Circles and Supplemental Plates

Japan's road signs are mostly pictograms, so the hard part of the 学科試験 (written test) is not theory — it is recognising a yellow diamond in half a second. Deck ZU6841 — Japan Driving Test: Signs covers 96 of them, grouped by sign family rather than alphabetically, which makes it unusually easy to study in blocks.

Nine cards from the deck

The six blocks, in order

Cards 1-6 set the colour and shape system: yellow diamonds for warnings, white-and-red circles for prohibitions, blue circles for mandatory instructions, green for expressways, dark blue for national highways. Cards 7-26 are the diamonds — crossroads, T- and Y-junctions, sharp curves, S-curves, railroad crossings, school zones, slippery road, rockfall, bumpy road, merging traffic, lane ends, two-way traffic, 10% ascents and descents, roadworks, crosswind, animals. Cards 27-43 are prohibitions: no entry, no trucks, no buses, no motorbikes, no bicycles, no dangerous goods, weight and height limits, no U-turn, no overtaking, speed limits. Cards 44-54 are the blue circles, 55-68 the parking and indication signs, and 69-82 the supplemental plates: 100m, 次 50m, 8-20, 追越し禁止, 学校, 安全速度 30, 静かに. Route shields, statutory speed limits, bus and bicycle lanes and lane-usage arrows close the deck.

Two fixes that change everything

This is a signs deck with no pictures. Every front describes the sign in words — yellow diamond with skidding car symbol — so it tests description-to-meaning, which is not what the exam asks. Worse, some thirty fronts answer themselves: nobody needs to know Japan to guess that a truck in a red circle means no trucks. Keep the official 標識一覧 chart open beside the app and reverse those cards — read the back first, then picture the sign.

Add the kanji to the sign cards. The supplemental-plate block teaches real Japanese text, but the signs themselves are described only in English, so you will not recognise 駐車禁止 (no parking) or 徐行 (slow down) on a real road plate. Put the Japanese name in each regulatory card's hint — it doubles as reading practice.

Two backs to correct

Card 88 gives the statutory urban limit as 40 km/h. The 法定速度 on ordinary roads is 60 km/h when nothing is posted; 40 km/h is merely a very common posted limit. Verify the current figure before your test — the rules for narrow roads without a centre line were revised in 2026. Card 87 dates itself too: large vehicles are capped at 80 km/h on expressways, but motorcycles run at the same 100 km/h as cars, and some sections are now 120.

Cards 55-56 also have their colours inverted: no-stopping and no-parking are blue discs with a red border carrying a red X or a single red diagonal, not red circles with blue markings. Fix them before they fossilise — the X-versus-diagonal distinction is a guaranteed exam item.

Look for ZU6841 — Japan Driving Test: Signs in your library on Flip It. Sibling decks: Pass the US Driving Test and Memorize the UK Highway Code.