Thursday, March 19, 2009
Friday the 13th
Friday the 13th……
Well another country is now is serious trouble. As of a few days ago I rented a car and am now driving in Japan. Yes….. now parents in a country other than the U.S. have a reason to keep their children off the streets. The first problem is that the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car along with driving on the wrong side of the road. At least so far I haven’t hit anyone. The opposite side of the road thing takes some getting used to and I don’t understand what some of the signs mean, but I have never been one to let not knowing how to do something stop me….so here I go. As the days have gone by and my confidence behind the wheel here has grown, I decided to drive to Hitachi to visit with Bryan and pick up Luanne and Tyler. Now to get to Hitachi from Yokohama, you have to drive through the middle to Tokyo! Highways in Japan are quite narrow and usually only have 2 lanes with exits and highway splits on whatever side of the road had room for them. So I started about 4:00 in the afternoon driving….let me recap here……..new driver in Japan, on the wrong side of the road, driving though Tokyo rush hour on Friday the 13th……what could go wrong ? I mean I had the navigation computer in the car, so what if I couldn’t understand the Japanese it spoke, I would just read the screen. What a plan! So I get out of Yokohama and into Tokyo and sure enough the highway was a parking lot with more cars than I have ever seen. I manage to get through the traffic pretty well when the nice lady on the computer began going nuts. I don’t know what she was saying but she sounded really serious and wouldn’t shut up. I tried several buttons on the computer ( all in Japanese ) but there was no volume or silent button. So I decide that I needed music to drown out the voice of the computer lady. So I plug the IPOD into the auxiliary of the radio and problem solved?......nope…the computer just played the computer lady ( who I have now named Nuyomi the Navigation Lady ) at the same volume as the music. But at least it helped me ignore whatever warning she was giving me. Now before I began this trip I got money for the weekend in crisp new Japanese bills, so as I approached one of the toll booths I thought no problem. Well MOST of the cars in Japan have an ETC ( toll tag ) in their cars so they can zip through the booth without stopping. They have 1 lane set up for those people like me who have no card and need to pay in cash. Of course that lane of the toll booth is over two lanes ….that was fun. When I got to the toll window I realized that the computer lady was trying to tell me that the toll booths don’t like making change, and they prefer that you have the ETC card. I smiled and told the attendant who spoke enough English to tell me they didn’t really make change that he could either do that or let me go…..and he found the change. I then smiled again and told him how happy his efforts would make the toll attendant at the next booth……he failed to see the logic in that I think. So I again got out into traffic having now successfully restructured the revenue policy of the Japan toll system, and I was now happy enough to begin singing with the radio. I eventually made it out of Tokyo and me and “Nuyomi the Navigation Lady” are going down the road harmonizing ( ? ) to Boston, Foreigner and Deep Purple. I managed to make the trip to Bryan’s house in about 3 hours and actually found his house from memory without the help of the computer. Next I will take on the drive to Mt Fuji……..If we never return you will know where to come look for us. I love this country.
Well another country is now is serious trouble. As of a few days ago I rented a car and am now driving in Japan. Yes….. now parents in a country other than the U.S. have a reason to keep their children off the streets. The first problem is that the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car along with driving on the wrong side of the road. At least so far I haven’t hit anyone. The opposite side of the road thing takes some getting used to and I don’t understand what some of the signs mean, but I have never been one to let not knowing how to do something stop me….so here I go. As the days have gone by and my confidence behind the wheel here has grown, I decided to drive to Hitachi to visit with Bryan and pick up Luanne and Tyler. Now to get to Hitachi from Yokohama, you have to drive through the middle to Tokyo! Highways in Japan are quite narrow and usually only have 2 lanes with exits and highway splits on whatever side of the road had room for them. So I started about 4:00 in the afternoon driving….let me recap here……..new driver in Japan, on the wrong side of the road, driving though Tokyo rush hour on Friday the 13th……what could go wrong ? I mean I had the navigation computer in the car, so what if I couldn’t understand the Japanese it spoke, I would just read the screen. What a plan! So I get out of Yokohama and into Tokyo and sure enough the highway was a parking lot with more cars than I have ever seen. I manage to get through the traffic pretty well when the nice lady on the computer began going nuts. I don’t know what she was saying but she sounded really serious and wouldn’t shut up. I tried several buttons on the computer ( all in Japanese ) but there was no volume or silent button. So I decide that I needed music to drown out the voice of the computer lady. So I plug the IPOD into the auxiliary of the radio and problem solved?......nope…the computer just played the computer lady ( who I have now named Nuyomi the Navigation Lady ) at the same volume as the music. But at least it helped me ignore whatever warning she was giving me. Now before I began this trip I got money for the weekend in crisp new Japanese bills, so as I approached one of the toll booths I thought no problem. Well MOST of the cars in Japan have an ETC ( toll tag ) in their cars so they can zip through the booth without stopping. They have 1 lane set up for those people like me who have no card and need to pay in cash. Of course that lane of the toll booth is over two lanes ….that was fun. When I got to the toll window I realized that the computer lady was trying to tell me that the toll booths don’t like making change, and they prefer that you have the ETC card. I smiled and told the attendant who spoke enough English to tell me they didn’t really make change that he could either do that or let me go…..and he found the change. I then smiled again and told him how happy his efforts would make the toll attendant at the next booth……he failed to see the logic in that I think. So I again got out into traffic having now successfully restructured the revenue policy of the Japan toll system, and I was now happy enough to begin singing with the radio. I eventually made it out of Tokyo and me and “Nuyomi the Navigation Lady” are going down the road harmonizing ( ? ) to Boston, Foreigner and Deep Purple. I managed to make the trip to Bryan’s house in about 3 hours and actually found his house from memory without the help of the computer. Next I will take on the drive to Mt Fuji……..If we never return you will know where to come look for us. I love this country.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)