When driving on the highway in Japan, you must consider the distance between your car and the one in front of you. But how do you measure that distance? Many of you probably think in terms of seconds. Although I do the same, seconds can’t tell the actual distance between cars.
On Japanese highways, there’s an easy way to determine the distance between cars. You can use the white lines that indicate lanes on the road. Each of the white lane divider lines are 8 meters long. The space between them is 12 meters long. Therefore, the sum of one white line and the distance to the next line is 20 meters.
If you want to stay 80 meters away from the car in front of you, you can think of it as four white lines and four blank spaces. For safe driving, please keep a sufficient following distance between you and the car in front of you.
Since 1996, Japanese-Online has been provided as a free service from PSPinc with the purpose of providing resources to individuals interested in learning about the Japanese Language and culture.
Japanese-Online has content suited to varying levels of study, including lessons for beginners as well as lessons tailored for those who need grammar and writing resources. Lessons are best suited to those who have basic understanding of hiragana and katakana alphabets before moving on to the more advanced grammar and particle lessons. Grammar lessons focus on learning about writing and creating more complex sentences and most lessons will not use romaji (Japanese sounds written with roman letters). Kanji is used in the lessons with hiragana and English translations provided.