It's definitely better than some of the egregious violations of road safety that I saw living in Florida. But the culture is different; most Japanese drivers, e

It's definitely better than some of the egregious violations of road safety that I saw living in Florida. But the culture is different; most Japanese drivers, even the young ones, are damn diligent about maintenance. There are still easy ways around the Shaken: typically swapping on your stock exhaust system for the inspection, and then taking it off immediately afterwards to install your straight pipe. You just re-attach the catalytic converter every 2 years. Or you can just pay for a "paper inspection", where a mechanic rubber-stamps your documentation. However, the police have been harshly cracking down on that the last few years. My Supra has a US-sourced custom single-piece driveshaft, which is apparently totally illegal, so I need to either cobble together a 2-piece shaft from OEM Toyota parts, or pay a shady shop. The Japanese police almost never do any sort of snap roadside inspection though, which is much better than the nightmare stories I hear from California.