As is my norm, I often pull my nose out of the book to look around and see if anyone has noticed me. Ego, I suppose.
I see a pair of first -year students from Ohtawara Chu Gakko (Ohtawara Junior High School) riding their bicycles towards me on the main street. However, my view of them becomes obstructed by a particularly ugly building and cherryless cherry tree. My sight line clears as they approach an intersection.
I want to see if they see and wave to me, so I can wave back, but unfortunately they don't look up. One of the boys rides straight along the main street while his friend turns left onto a smaller but equally pitted road.
I found it strange to notice that the Japanese students don't do any elaborate c-ya's like we do back in Canada.
I watched as the kid who had turned left pedaled away from my apartment (so he did see me!) by putting his head down and riding as fast as he could. He was really motoring. I recall thinking to myself that he's really riding close to the side of the road.
I wondered how he had the guts to do that, I mean Japanese cars like to pull out of driveways quite by surprise - I should know, I've swerved out of their way many a time. Hoping he wouldn't get hit, I still had this feeling deep in my stomach that told me something was going on - perhaps brought on by that batch of buttered octopus cookies I ate for lunch, but I wasn't sure.
Watching as my student headed straight for the back of a parked, white van, I figured that he'd be like me, and swerve out of the way at the very last second, in an insane game of one-on-none chicken - but, nope! Smash!
He plowed right into the back of it! I didn't laugh because the little guy could have broken his neck, arm or some other important part of his body like his pencil case.
He was lying on the street crying in pain or shock or for effect, I don't know. I was too far away to actually hear his whimpering, and while I saw him rolling on the ground, I was getting up to go and see if I could help him.
Then I saw it - a group of neighbours who had heard the crash were playing Rock-Scissors-Paper (jan-ken-po) to determine who would go and see if the boy was all right. The loser, an old man with a bad limp and a beer in his hand, went over to survey the situation.
He was loud. He barked at the kid to get up and see the owner of the van about apologizing for the damage and then made him run and get his mother. The kid seemed to be okay.
While he went into his house (next door), all of the other neighbours came outside to peer at the student-sized dent in the rear hatch of the van. Out of nowhere, hordes of white cars showed up and slowed down to see why everyone else was rubber-necking.
The kid and his mother came running out and began bowing at the owner of the van, then his wife, grandmother and dog.
The hordes of rubber-neckers left after it became apparent that nobody had died or was horribly maimed, racing off to the photo shops to develop their box camera pictures of the large dent. At least that's what I assumed they did. They really were taking pictures.
That's not news, but it is another day in Ohtawara.
Somewhere avoiding white vans,
Andrew Joseph
Today's title is by Otis Redding and was released posthumously in 1968. Otis also wrote the Aretha Franklin hit, Respect. Listen here to The Dock Of The Bay .
PS - Photo above is me perched on my dock where I spend evenings and weekends watching the world go by... either Matthew or Ashley snapped the photo for me by looking out to the left from my bedroom window. The street pictured is south of where the accident occurred. I'm reading some schlock by Stephen King.
