Instant Car-ma

Ever since I wrote about the hazards of bicycle riding a few blogs ago, I've been inundated with requests (those darn voices in my head) to write about motor vehicles--to get the other side of my strange way of meeting Japanese people.

Although I don't have a car (like my friend Tim Mould--another AET; or even like how Matthew would eventually get the use of one), I have been a passenger in one several times here in Japan. That I have survived--including one semi-painful collision--to tell this tale, must make me some sort of expert on automobiles. Or so those voices keep telling me.

As previously mentioned,  Japanese roads suck. To compensate (or perhaps I'm using that word incorrectly), the average Japanese driver sucks, too. I'm not saying they are bad people, merely bad drivers.

While it appears as though the drivers here are very polite (and they are), their driving skills leave much to the imagination. One might think that the constant gridlock, or the fact that the only person who wears a seatbelt here is me (their choice, despite the law requiring seatbelts), might actually cause folks to slow down and drive safer - but no, that's not the case.

One of the teachers who drives me to Chikasono Junior High School--it's located deep within a swath of corn fields, and I have no idea where it is in relation to my downtown home--anyhow, he thinks he's the reincarnation of Mario Andretti, if Mario were actually dead, of course.

He drives a tiny white Toyota Corsa--I'm unsure if it actually made it to the U.S. or Canada--that has numerous added on dials and gadgets that are fitted into his crammed dashboard, making the car look like the cockpit for a modern fighter plane. He even has three dials placed on the front of his windsheild on the car hood--almost as if he has a nitrous oxide tank hidden somewhere.

So, I asked him... I asked him what some of the dials indicate. I kid you not - he said he didn't know, but it looks great, right. Because all of this happened before the entertaining Fast and Furious movies, including the Tokyo Drift, I had no idea that people enjoyed street racing over here.

This guy - who also happened to be the English teacher I worked with at Chikasono - he showed off some of his goatpath racing skills during our initial meeting. He changed lanes to lanes that did not exist. When we were in traffic in downtown Ohtawara, he used the zipper method.. no wait, the thread-the-needle method of blowing through a red light and squirting between oncoming cars. When in the country, I thought the one-lane roads with traffic coming towards us might make him slow down, but he merely swerved over onto a sidewalk to pass. I was impressed, there aren't that many sidewalks here in Japan.

It's my opinion that bad driving is a cultural thing. Wait, I have proof. (You'd better!) (Shut-up!) Voices... heh.
While sitting totally strapped into the passenger side of the front seat of a white car (like the UK, the driver sits on the right), I noticed that my driver (another guy) was bowing his head at everyone in the oncoming lane. When that head goes down, I'm pretty sure he can't see a darn thing in front of him. I guess that's why it was no big surprise to me when we rear-ended another vehicle. On the plus side, I got the day off work to take care of my headache.

In yet another car, heading over to Sakuyama Junior High Scool in the south end of Ohtawara--easily a 30-minute drive from my place--I had the school nurse, the non-English speaking Nurse Gunji, drive me. At a four-way stop intersection, I noticed another car perpendicular to us had arrived first. Gunji-san despite arriving second, quickly pulled out--but so, too did the other car. After both cars screeched to a stop (and you/we bump your/my/our head on the dashboard--despite the seatbelt, it's a tiny car, and I would have hit my head even if I had nodded it), Gunji-san rolls down her driver's side window and shouts in English the only words I was ever to hear her speak (probably for your/my/our benefit) (Shut-up!): "Ladies first!"

Oh my. She actually believed this to be a truth about driving. She seemed positively stunned when I had the local English teacher translate for me that the first car at a four-way intersection always has the right of way, unless their are pedestrians, in which case the pedestrians always trump the cars. (Or is it the car on the left has the right of way? They do drive on the other side of the road...?) (Quiet, you. This is my story!)

It makes me wonder what the Japanese need to get a driver's license. A blood test confirming their astrological sign and a course on table etiquette? And, yes... many Japanese do believe something about a person's blood type and astrology helping to define one's character.Pundits would have me believe that because I'm always harping on the Japanese way of life that I must B negative. I'm not, though. (I am.)

Somewhere, we have a headache.
Andrew Joseph