Life Is A Highway...

…and I’m going to drive in the left lane all night long.

Cause they seem to get mad when I drive on the right. Yes, that’s right. They were crazy enough to let me loose behind the wheel here in Japan.

When I got my International Driver’s Permit a few weeks before I came over here, I told everyone that I had absolutely no intention on driving here, and curiously enough, I was being entirely truthful at the time. I simply got the permit to have another form of photo ID. It was also just crazy easy to obtain. With a U.S. Driver’s License and 15 dollars, it can take as little as 10 minutes to get a permit that will allow you to drive almost anywhere in the world for an entire year. Don’t they know that most of the world, including Japan, drive on the wrong side of the road? I would like to go on the record as saying I don’t think this is a very good idea. Now that I’ve put my thoughts on the record… off the record, wheeeee! I’m driving!

How did this happen, you might ask? Well, a friend of Nobie’s was buying a new car and wanted to get rid of his old one. And unlike the US, there is not a very big market for used cars here in Japan. Something about inheriting another person’s bad karma… Anyway, when he heard that I could use a car, he simply offered to give it to me since he wouldn’t get anything in trade-in value. I just needed to buy the car insurance and pay the tags and registration when it expires in June and I’ve got myself a car.

Nobie and I met with the insurance agent Wednesday evening – he just happened to be the uncle of the man giving me the car – and the moment I handed over the money and received the receipt, I was officially insured and legally okayed to drive my car.

I’m not completely reckless, though. I didn’t just hop behind the wheel and say, “So, I’m supposed to be in the left lane, right?” The day before, Stewart had taken me out to a small rural area near the Ariake Sea so I could practice with an experienced driver to guide me. And in all honesty, driving on the left side of the road isn’t that big of a deal. It’s the fact that the steering wheel is on the left side and all of the gears and controls are flipped around. Whenever I wanted to flip on my turn signal, the windshield wipers would come on. I didn’t realize just how ingrained some physical habits can be. Even though intellectually I knew the lever I wanted was on the right side of the wheel, I had the hardest time trying to stop myself from going to the left side for it.

Stewart said I did okay however, so the next day when I got my car, I had received the official Johnson Seal of Approval to drive by myself… as long as I stayed in the rural areas of Kikuchi and did my best to avoid busy areas like downtown Kumamoto. And that’s fine with me. It’s incredibly odd to use so much concentration and thought on something that I have been doing for more than 10 years now, without much thought. I’ll drive back and forth to work and maybe to a grocery store once in a while, but for anything else, I am perfectly happy to let someone else drive. Well, that and the fact that gas is $1.36 per liter, which for a moment sounds pretty good, but when converted out of that silly metric system, is a about $6.50. Yikes.

Other than the flipped gears and control, the driving on the wrong side of the road, and the insane price of gas: Japan has done more to make things difficult for drivers. Streets don’t have names. That’s right. No names. So how in the world can one expect to find anything? To listen to someone give directions, it sounds something like this: ‘Turn right after you pass the JA gas station on the left side of the road. Go about five minutes and you’ll see a big yellow grocery store on the right side of the road. Turn left there and go about 10 minutes. When you see a electrical pole with a blue sign on it, immediately turn left and there it is.”

What they won’t tell you is that after you pass the JA gas station, there are two small roads that look more like alleys than roads that you need to pass before turning right at a larger road. Then the road that you travel for 10 minutes splits about three times. The first time, you need to take the smaller road: then the next two times, you need to stay on the larger one. Maps don’t reflect these things, either. And even the highways and routes that are assigned a number don’t really have road signs. If you turn onto Route 139, it’s going to split several times without any sign to indicate which way Route 139 goes. It’s a miracle anyone can get anywhere. The Japanese seem to have the idea that if you don’t know exactly where you are going, you don’t belong there.

I have driven to work for two days and each time got semi-lost, or at least not on the road that I was supposed to be on. And usually, just as I’m looking for a place to stop and ask directions, I look up and see my destination right in front of me. If anyone needed convincing that God protects fools and little children…

- Jenny