Well, I’m back again.

I had a nice, long summer break back home and just returned to Japan a couple of days ago. I’d tell you more about the break, but it seems like when I talk about it, everyone tends to get a little upset. I don’t exactly brag about it, but somewhere in the conversation, the person I’m talking to begins to realize that I have a lot of time off. Yeah, you, too, right? Well, it’s the Japanese university system. There’s even more time off than for American teachers and that’s all I should say about it.

Let's start with the photo(s) of the day. Here's a contradiction that I've always wondered about in Japan.

There are a whole lot of abandoned bicycles at most train stations in Japan. These are actually pretty orderly, set up in a line like they are. Sometimes the bikes just piled up by the door. The bike in the second photo looks like it was abandoned about 1956.

I have a couple questions about this.

First, where do they come from? Who takes their bike to the train station and forgets where they left it - forever? One theory I heard is that these bikes weren't left by the owners. They were 'borrowed' for a quick trip to the station and never returned. However, if this is true, why woudn't you go down to the station and look for your bike as soon as you saw it was missing? These bikes never seem to be claimed. Witness the one from 1956.

Next, why do the owners of the parking lots (yes, there are parking lots for bicycles) just leave the bikes there? After a certain amount of time, you'd think they'd be junked. In the U.S., they be in the flea market within a couple weeks.

Ah, the mysteries of the Orient.

Back to my original theme...

I was actually pretty busy most of my break. When I came to Japan at the beginning of April, I left a lot of unfinished business in California. I spent a good deal of my break this time catching up with stuff from last spring - insurance, taxes, car registration and repair, and other stuff that I couldn’t seem to take care of from Japan.

Not one thing that I attempted to accomplish before leaving California worked out. You may think that’s an exaggeration, but I’ve got documentation.

For example, I took the liability insurance off of my car because it wasn’t going to be driven for the time I was in Japan. My insurance company says okay, got it, no problem. Liability insurance off.

Then in May, I got a letter forwarded to me from the DMV that said my registration would be suspended for lack of financial responsibility unless I reinstated my insurance by May 25. That was, of course, the day before I received the letter in Japan. I guess I can understand that the state would require insurance and not care about my particular circumstances, but wouldn’t you think that my insurance company would mention the fact that my registration would be suspended if I took off the liability insurance?

Anyway, that involved several overseas phone calls to get straightened out and just when it was taken care of, it was time to register my Rialta - a little RV that’s just sitting in the driveway in California while I’m here but still needs to be insured and registered.

The problem this time was that even though, technically, you can register vehicles online, you need the internet registration number on the new form in order to do it and my mom, who’s taking care of my mail for me, insisted the number wasn’t there. The DMV, another overseas call, insisted that it was and wouldn’t register the vehicle without it, even though I had the license and vehicle identification number. It turned out my mom was right, the number wasn’t on the form, but it didn’t matter because by the time I got back to California, the registration was late and I had to pay a fine on it. I spent some pleasant hours at the DMV in August.

I mention all this to show that it’s not just the Japan DMV that has things going on. California can give them a run for their money.

Actually, it’s probably all bureaucracy everywhere. They’re all difficult to work with. They all have problems. The thing is that the problems I had in Japan had a cultural overlay - and here we go, back to the Menkyo Center.

Well, my thought on the test was that I would continue to take it on Mondays, when I didn’t have any classes and could make up any office time I was missing, as I continued to find ways to study and gather more information. Then, if I did pass, even if just by luck, I could forget about the damn thing. This idea was as opposed to taking two or three weeks for study and research and then failing anyway.

So there I was, at 8 a.m. the following Monday back at the Menkyo Center, with all that entailed - getting up really early, trains, buses, money, etc. [see previous].

I stood in line, bought my $16 worth of stamps again for the privilege of taking the test, and stood in another line to have my papers checked.

Something I forgot to mention - you have to provide your own picture for the test documents, two, in fact. They had kept one picture the first time I had taken the test. Why, I don’t know, unless they have a gallery of failures in a back room somewhere where the staff all have a good laugh comparing pictures and test scores. Anyway, I had to provide another picture. Add one more expense.

I was able to bypass the eye test this time, them (they?) probably figuring how bad could my eyes go in one week? Little do they (them?) know. And back to the third floor.

The test was the same format, different questions, but exactly the same problems as I had had before. Some questions were obvious, some were a little unclear, and some were just go ahead and guess because you’re never going to figure them out. But this time, an hour later, when the test numbers appeared on the big screen, mine was amongst’em. I passed.

You might be thinking I could now pick up my license and go home. If so, you weren’t paying attention earlier.

The next step was to sit through a series of lectures, in Japanese only, that made me despair of ever understanding the language and then following the rest of the passees around to see what to do next, presuming that they, at least, had understood the lectures and instructions. Basically this consisted of having my picture taken again and buying $65 worth of stamps that, I think, was the license fee. For all I know, I could have been contributing to the Society for Making Getting a Driver’s License Really Difficult, Especially for Foreigners.

After that, I was made to understand that the scooter driving class would begin after lunch sometime. I had a quick lunch and managed to find my way to the correct place by following some of the others that I thought I recognized from the morning. Luckily, I was following the right people. Otherwise, I would have just been a kind of creepy foreigner following people around the Menkyo Center and there’s probably a law against that, as well there should be.

Next - I learn to ride a gentsuki... again.