Beautiful Calm Driving

Part 3.

A friend of mine thought that these blogs were going to be about me. I'm sorry but I don't think my life is interesting enough to fuel three blogs in three days as per the rules of my BONANZA. Otherwise it would be a detailing of the stupid things I do each and every day. On that note; Today was school photos and in typical Kris fashion I completely forgot about it even though I was discussing it with a teacher yesterday.

(Typical Kris)

This wouldn't usually be a problem because teachers bring several jackets to school (just in case?!) so I could have worn one of theirs but this same thing happened last year too. Instead of swallowing my pride I decided to skip this meal and got the blessing to dash home and grab my suit and dash back. I had about 50 minutes to do a 60 minute round-trip. I'll spare you the details about what went down but no one died, no police were involved and I got back to school on time. What did occur was some pretty severe, yet reserved, road rage. Why?

You see there are many things about the transportation system in Japan. Trains are perfects, bikes are nice and convenient and walking would be fine if anyone actually did it. I'm talking about driving. As I live about 20km away from my schools it was necessary for me to have a car and frankly I wasn't complaining. Car = freedom, as far as I'm concerned.

(Not THIS much freedom)

In Australia I had a piece of crap car. I really liked it though because it was cheap and it did everything I needed it to do. That is to say, it took me from point A to point B. I never saw the appeal of adding modifications to my car or spending my money on anything other than fuel. It was a pretty good deal and when I worked and was at uni it mostly just had to take me to the train station about 10 minutes away. It was 80km/h most of the way and there was maybe 2 traffic lights. Life was easy. Life was simple.

In Japan my car is a lot smaller which suits the Japanese lifestyle quite well. Fairly fuel efficient and, like my old car in Australia, takes me from point A to point B - sometimes C! Not common though... not common. The only problem I have with driving in Japan is pretty much everything other than the car and the side of the road. Allow me to elaborate by putting things into sub headings and talking about them briefly.

Traffic lights
I've gone from none to handful of traffic lights in Australia to one directly outside of my apartment car park in Japan. What's worse is that it's a traffic light to get onto the main road so you can guarantee it's going to be red about 85% of the time. I live in quite a busy area of my city so to get from one side of the city to the other it can actually be faster to ride a bike which, in short, infuriates me. I hate being hindered waiting for the god damn traffic lights to change when I'm just trying to LEAVE.

(How the average Japanese person apparently views the multitude of traffic lights)

Speed
So after I get out of the city you would think I'm free to journey towards my destination and I usually I am... in a way. Only trouble is I have to stick to 50km/h because that's just how they do things in Japan. Slow. Stupidly so. I'll be driving along with nothing but rice paddies for the last 10 minutes and it's still a mandatory 50km. That is practically walking speed! Generally I take an artistic license to the driving speed and it's with this warping of my reality that I get to work on time every morning. Almost every single morning though I am stuck behind some old fuddy duddy sticking to his antiquated and dusty guns and, despite a long trail of cars behind him, adamantly sticks to 50.

(A menace to us all)

People
My city doesn't have a train station so most people drive. It would be unfair to say everyone is a terrible driver as that falls onto the shoulders of a few select individuals. Not using their indicator, suddenly stopping, changing lanes without looking, pulling out at completely inappropriate times, running lights, not watching for pedestrians, and so on. You think of the most annoying driver/traffic related thing you can and you can be darn sure it happens here every single day.

I was involved in an accident last year it's true. I'll tell you what happened though before you start stoning me for being a hypocrite. I was on my way to work and a girl on a bike rode in front of me. She was fine, a little bit of bruising on her leg, but she was up and at it on the scene. I was going 10km under the speed limit and she had a stop sign she didn't stop at. It could have been a lot worse but as it was all that was really damaged was her bike. Which I had to pay for. She can't blame her stupidity on the accident because clearly that was a lost cause to begin with. I'm not going to get on my milk crate and say it was her fault... But yeah, it pretty much was.

(My shitty MS. Paint effort)

Combine all of my irritated grumblings above the with the Japanese address system or lack there of and you've got one frustrated Kris on your hands! Streets don't have names so addresses are done in an area-type format with numbers being splashed about along with post codes. Mail gets where it needs to because the posties know the situation but as there are no numbers anywhere or any indication that I am anywhere near where I want to be - it can get a little confusing.

Gas stations have people that fill up your car for you though! That's pretty sweet.


Thus concludes my 3 blogs in 3 days BONANZA. This was hard work. I thought of some more ideas but I'll save them for when I have free time. By that I mean free time when I have absolutely nothing better to do. I don't imagine it will be too long.

I didn't bother proof reading this.

kris.