The view of the town is actually interesting to me. With the overhanging wires and the houses crowded together as they are, if I were in California, I would consider it much differently. The novelty of the Japanese urban landscape, to me anyway, gives it charm. It won’t let me forget the corresponding novelty of just where I am in this world.
The second picture is looking down on the street in front of my apartment building. The streets in Japan can be, often are, very narrow. Even in Tokyo, they can seem more like alleys to North Americans. In addition, sidewalks are often lacking. This puts life right in the streets. It’s not unusual to have someone walking on each side of the street, a car going each way, and a scooter or bicycle threading its way between them. I don't know why the streets aren't littered with wrecks and bodies, but everyone seems to know what everyone else is doing - everyone except me, that is.
All that activity is something that I have to get used to in addition to driving on the left. It’s much more complicated than it seems. No one reacts in a manner that one used to driving elsewhere would expect.
Just the other day I was waiting on my scooter to make a right turn. There was someone coming towards me in the opposite lane and he made a left on the same street that I was going to turn on. There was a car following him and I waited for that one to pass and then accelerated into my turn only to find that the car that had turned before me had stopped 10 feet up the street, in my lane, to let someone out. This put me in the position of having to go from acceleration to a dead stop in about 1 second flat. I did it, but I had some choice California driving expressions for the guy.
I’ve adopted the Japanese habit of riding scooters in the rain, too, at least on occasion. I’ve mentioned before that it’s done all the time here. Yesterday, on my way to work, I saw three different people riding their scooters in the rain carrying umbrellas. I don’t even know how that works. You have to keep one hand on the throttle, of course. How can you brake? I learned the hard way when I was in 6th grade that you don’t hit your brakes even on a bicycle unless you have both hands on the handlebars. I’ve got the scars to remind me of that particular lesson.
Another thing I can’t get used to is the attitude of pedestrians.
Today I was driving along, rather slowly because there were pedestrians, and a university student started to walk into the street in
front of me without even looking to his right - the direction I was coming from. I thought, “Wow. How did he get to that stage of his life with a lack of a sense of self-preservation like that?” As he stepped in front of me, he turned and looked me in the eye and I thought, okay, he sees me and he’ll stop. Nope. He looked at me and continued to walk right in front of my moving scooter. Apparently, he expected me to stop, and I did, but it seems to me that a pedestrian would not count on a driver and vehicle being so obliging. He’s the one that’s going to suffer if it doesn’t work out the way he hopes.
That particular kind of incident has happened to me before. When I told my Japanese friends these stories, they agreed that the actions were dangerous and said that they, personally, wouldn’t do anything like that, but that they are common occurrences.
It’s culture again. Somehow, the people in the cars and on the scooters and bikes and those walking along the streets anticipate what all of the others are going to do. The constant movement in the streets, as well as the overall crowding, seems to give people almost like a sixth sense.
I’m sure it doesn’t always end happily, but I’ve only seen two accidents in my time in Japan, and I was in one of them. The first time I lived here, about 15 years ago, driving a scooter on an international permit, I got run off the road by a woman in a car coming towards me who looked me right in the eye and made a turn in front of me anyway. We were obviously working on different signals.
It makes me worry about Japanese students and tourists visiting the U.S. They have to unlearn quickly what they know about traffic in Japan in order to stay safe and it goes well beyond just driving on the opposite side of the road.
By the way, did I mention that I’m now living over a pachinko parlor? Stay tuned.
