Mike

Ball

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November 12, 2007

Japan, Part 3: When in Fukuoka, Drive Like the Fukuokans

The first thing you notice when you hop into your rental car in Japan and try to drive it away is that the gas, brake and clutch pedals are missing, and you’re sitting there trying to steer the glove compartment. And for some reason the front seat passenger gets a steering wheel.

I discovered that there were also pedals on the passenger side, and that all the Japanese people seemed to like sitting over there when they drive, so I figured, what the heck. When in Fukuoka . . .

The Japanese also seem to really enjoy driving on the wrong side of the road, like the British. I think this might have something to do with the amount of tea both British and Japanese people drink – it’s like all that caffeine makes them want to grind their teeth and make right turns into the left lane.

Driving in Japan presents a number of challenges beyond shifting gears with your left hand and remembering which lever is the turn signal and which one operates the windshield wipers (I never did quite master that). For one thing, the roads are all narrower than the mind of Pat Robertson, and they all allow two-way traffic. Add in pedestrians, bicycles and the Japanese habit of building houses and rice paddies right up to the edge of the road, and you have a driving situation that makes bungee jumping seem relaxing.

Oddly enough, the Japanese do not seem to get particularly stressed by all of this. In fact, just to make things a little more interesting, most Japanese cars have little television sets mounted next to the steering wheel, angled so the driver can dodge around school kids, talk on the cell phone, and still catch the latest episode of “Bowling for Sushi”.

Just a side note here on Japanese television – they have some of the most creative ads I’ve ever seen. And even though they speak a language that seems to consist of beautiful but entirely random sounds, you can generally figure out exactly what they are selling.

My favorite was a pitch for some sort of cold medication, viewed as a gaggle of schoolgirls dove for the relative safety of a soybean field. In the commercial, a samurai master was explaining the value of concentration to his young pupil and holding up a bottle of the remedy. In the next scene, as the young warrior is engaging in a sword battle, he sneezes and loses both the battle and his head.

Talk about clearly establishing the need for the product!

The hardest part of driving in Japan comes from the fact that very few streets have names, and the ones that do are called something different every few blocks. Plus, nobody has a street address, which means that the normal state for most Japanese drivers is “lost.”

We spent our first three days in Japan driving around hopelessly lost, a problem compounded by the fact that we couldn’t read any of the signs. And when we had Japanese people who spoke enough English to help us, even they had a lot of trouble finding any place they had never actually been to before.

And so my greatest triumph as a motorist in Japan was the first time I recognized a 7/Eleven (yes, they have those in Japan) I had seen before, and was able to successfully navigate back to where we were staying. I pulled triumphantly into the driveway, only three and a half hours after leaving a restaurant five miles away, with my windshield wipers signaling my turn for all the world to see.

In my joy of accomplishment I shouted, “Banzai!” which I believe is Japanese for “Hey everybody, the Meathead finally made it home!”

Next week – we don’t need no culture – we’re from Detroit!

Copyright © 2007, Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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