I learned how to drive on the left, steering wheel on the right, to drive company cars to the various job sites to teach. It was on-the-job training: I was simply made to follow another teacher who would pass my particular job site, my first day with the company. She didn't slow down or consider that this was my first time driving with everything in the wrong place. I had very white knuckles... oh, and then I had to find my way back. Tell me that wasn't fun.
The first few weeks were my learning curve; after that everything felt normal and it was fine. But during those first few weeks, once I had a little fender bender because of the altered depth perception. And once I hit a kid.... HE WAS OKAY!! I was a wreck, but he was okay. Stupid teenage boy, driving his scooter at night without the light on. His parents arrived shortly after the police did; they said he did this "all the time."
Call me crazy, but if he'd been my kid, he'd have no scooter privileges.
So driving is a little intense. Many roads are 1.5 cars widths wide, and people are walking along the sides ~ children and old people and drunks.... There are unspoken, unwritten rules about driving and giving way on those narrow streets. Actually rather polite driving habits, much of the time.
I'd lived there the first three years without knowing how to drive in Japan. At university, one of my friends who had a car let me try it on some back rice-paddy road, but everything was backwards and I chickened out after only about 20 seconds. Maybe ten. But my International Drivers License allowed me to drive a scooter (like a Vespa, but of course a Japanese brand), so I bought a used one of those, instead. Vroom! Vroom! That was a lot of fun.
In Tsuchiura, site of my first teaching job, I was there for more than a year before I had wheels of my own. I'd take the bus to get downtown, and from there the trains, taxis, or other busses to get to my classes. Sometimes I'd walk ~ often I'd walk. It was a 20 minute walk from my apartment to the train station, but if the weather was good, and I wasn't late, there was no reason to take public transportation. Even coming home after dark was no problem. This was Japan, after all ~ safest place on earth!
About 15 months into my 2-year stay, a friend found me a bicycle in the trash. In the "big gomi" trash. (Gomi means trash.) There is a "gomi night" in every city or town in Japan about once a month. Non-burnable items that people don't want anymore are taken to a designated spot along a given stretch of road, where it's picked up the next morning. Many people go "gomi hunting" all night on those evenings. You can often find brand new, unused (unopened!) things ~ one of my friends found a VCR, still in the box; another friend found money inside a purse or envelope or something... but the rule is that you share money with everyone who's with you out there, in your group. Honor among trash hunters.
I went gomi hunting once or twice, but generally it gave me the creeps. Still, when my friend showed up at my apartment with a bicycle, I was happy. I was even happier to see it: just a little rust on the side, otherwise in excellent condition, key still in the lock (that's how we know it was "in" the trash and not simply beside it, owner down a ways somewhere, hunting gomi).
Suddenly my errands were done quickly! It didn't take all morning to go to the bank, stop at the dry cleaner's, pick up groceries, and go home. For that matter... I could stock up on groceries rather than go every two days, because I could put them in the basket in front, and strap them on the little luggage rack thing in the back. Sometimes my friend Margaret and I would ~ illegally, but shhh ~ double up and head into town. She'd sit on the luggage rack thing on the back, hold up her feet, and off we'd go. Just like all the junior and senior high school kids, we'd double up on the bicycle.
One of those “illegal” things in Japan that everyone does.
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