More Driving in Japan, and Some about Why I Live Here

Here's an intersection I regularly pass through, looking north. I passed through it on my bicycle today and thought, well, I drive through lots worse than this every day. Let's take a picture and post it. (If I were driving, I'd be on the left side of the road, not the right side where this picture was taken from.) It's a little weird, but not so weird here.

Unless you're looking really closely, it looks like a psi (Ψ) intersection. 

But hidden over on the left is another road:

This is looking west.

Here's what it looks like across the intersection, looking south.

Here's a rough diagram of the intersection:

 

(You may note that it looks something like the intersection where I got ticketed several months back. Not really, but sort of. 

On that one, the crossing roads are offset from each other, and there is a crosswalk between with a light, and, in spite of the shape of the roads, the main road goes straight instead of curving to the left. And there is the major intersection to the west that often becomes the locus of traffic snarls. Maybe I should draw a diagram of it and insert it in that post. Not today. I have other things I think I need to do.)

No, this is not a "LOOK HOW TERRIBLE JAPANESE ROADS ARE!!!" post. If I wanted to do that, this is not the poster child intersection I'd use, by far. And that is not what I want to say, so I'm not going to take the time to run out to where I work and take pictures of the three or four or five locations that I think are most dangerous on my daily mail route. Be aware that, compared to those, this intersection is no problems at all.

What I want to say is, well, it's going to take me a few paragraphs, please bear with me.

When I first came back to Japan with my wife, I thought I was a pretty decent driver. Not that I thought I was equal to the roads and traffic in Osaka, but I thought I was pretty good at it. Two years driving as a job in the States in addition to what, fifteen, sixteen years of regular daily driving? You know, pride.

I knocked around for a couple or three months looking for work, then friends at church gave me some of their private English students they didn't have enough time to teach. But that was out in the country, and I was teaching in their homes, so I had to drive.

So I went and got a Japanese license. 

At the time, all I had to do was go to the local Japan Automobile Federation office and get my existing Stateside license translated, then take the translation to the nearest office of the Hyōgo Prefectural Police that handled new drivers' license applications for foreigners -- the police office in Akashi. 

About four months later, they changed the law, and I'd have had to take the written test. I think that would have been okay, I had looked over the materials, and I was pretty sure I could pass the written test with a high enough score. Probably. But I would have had to study for a couple of weeks first, and I might have not passed on the first try.

Nowadays, they also require a skills test (driving test). That probably would have been okay, too. Maybe not on the first try, though. Probably would have taken me a couple more weeks, which might have been long enough to have missed the opportunity to take over teaching those classes.

Technically, they don't require attendance at a driving school in Japan, even for true first-timers. But they strongly recommend it for those with no driving experience, and it can be difficult navigating through the application process if you don't have a school to prepare your paperwork for you -- even for those born and raised here. At least, that was how it was. 

I should check if it still is.

Yes, it still is, as of the date I am writing this. You can skip the school if you can pass the tests, even if you were born and raised here. JAF even has web pages detailing two ways to do it. But it is not easy.

Am I glad I didn't have to do any of that?

Yes. I even consider it a blessing that I was able to avoid the tests. I didn't have time or money to fail either test, much less attend a driving school in Japan.

(A blessing, you say? Wasn't it just a matter of timing and chance?)

Well, when my job search Stateside wasn't going well after graduation and my wife said, let's go to Japan, you can always teach English, I -- 

I don't know how to describe this. It was more than a hunch to me, but agnostics and skeptics would see no reason to call it anything but a hunch.

I knew better than to move to Japan, you see. 

I had spent two years in Japan as a missionary. I knew how different the language and customs are here.

And I understood the difficulties a primary breadwinner would have in a foreign country, living with unfamiliar customs, trying to learn a foreign language for real use -- not just to pass a college exam. That is, I had some idea of just how bad it could be.

I have, at some points, compared it to going back to kindergarten and having to do all that again. 

You get a lot of "You should understand this, with your experience." Then, when the language and the hidden assumptions have you doing what they think is the exact wrong thing, and you don't have the words to explain in their language why it's actually the right thing, they start treating you like a kindergartener. And then some of your coworkers start treating you like deadwood and trying to get rid of you. 

I'm not going to tell you just how bad it got with a couple of the companies I worked for when I was determined not to give up, but it got bad enough to sour me on both software engineering and teaching English.

And I had some idea of how bad it could be from experience. I grew up in west Texas, and some of my friends' parents were from the other side of the border. I saw what they experienced. We do the same things to foreigners in the States, even though we have a lot more experience with the melting pot, and we know we should not.

Coming here was completely illogical. Completely against reason. Completely inadvisable.

But I knew I should come with her and I knew it was then, no waiting. 

The license was not the only reason, but it's the only reason I'll bring up here today.

Call it a hunch. Call it guidance. Call it inspiration. Call it revelation. Call it crazy.

It was crazy. Crazy according to the wisdom of man.

No, I do not recommend cross-cultural marriage. Talk to me privately, and I can tell you all sorts of reasons not to do it. 

But God's wisdom surpasses that of mortal man. -- Name those verses? Isaiah 55 and Doctrine and Covenants 1, just off the top of my head. -- I apparently needed this struggle, or something like it. I apparently still need it. Talk to me privately, and I can tell you something about that, too.

Back to driving in Japan, there are all sorts of things that are just different from wherever you learned to drive, unless you learned here. Driving on the left is not even the beginning of it. (Use your horn to say, "Thanks"?)

Those first two years, when I was driving around to teach English, I really was not driving wrong -- or it wouldn't have been wrong in (most of) the US. But I was lucky. No, I had angels watching over me, to keep me from doing myself and others harm by what I didn't understand. 

No, I'm not talking about the time I went on the off ramp and found myself facing traffic. 

Well, I had protection that time, too, and the mistake was partly a result of not being familiar with the roads enough to recognize I was reverting to the US side of the road before I actually made it onto the highway. So I guess I'm talking about that time, too.

But driving for the Post Office these last two years has given me an appreciation for all sorts of little things that work here to make driving here safer and an overall better experience for everyone, many of which would simply not work in the US.

Each country has it's own road rules. 

If I had had a chance, had the time and money, I think I would have liked to have gotten my license here the way my wife did -- take a month to go to driving school and take the practice tests, both driving and written. If I had the time and money now, it would be nice to go back for the equivalent of a commercial license, although I really do not want to drive 20 ton trucks for a living here. It would be a chance to learn more of the language, both verbal/written and non-verbal/non-written, and it would help me figure out better what to do when I get in awkward situations.

On the other hand, constant awareness that I should avoid awkward situations is not a bad strategy at my age, either. 

And, back again to Pharisees and the habits we humans tend to have of depending too much on rules, life is full of stuff where we don't have time or other resources to take the path that appears most optimal. 

We shouldn't deliberately make things harder on each other by choosing less optimal paths when we have a choice, but when the most optimal path is not available, it's better to take a path that is available.

And (as my wife says, I always say one thing too many) this, by the way, is the difference between "The perfect is the enemy of the good." and "Human ideals are no match for the wisdom of God."