[morninglight]

Japan's continued use of the imperial year system is similar to America's use of imperial units instead of the metric system.

Don't count on either changing soon.

[mc3301]

Wait until you learn about companies that use their founding year as the first year on their calendar.

But also, it is, in fact, changing. A lot of official government dates (such as drivers licenses) are no longer going to use the imperial year system.

[kijin]

A driver's license needs to be legible by foreigners when you travel abroad. The cops aren't going to bother looking up Kanji to figure out whether your license is valid, so the dates had better be printed in Gregorian.