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If there’s one thing that I Iearned in first year bio- sure, I failed, but joke’s on you because I actually remember two things from it-, it’s the KISS principle. (the other thing is the lil sea slug that photosynthesizes and I know that I know the name of it but I can’t remember right now, frig)
The KISS principle, also called parsimony principle (but that name is like, way less fun), stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. This means that in most cases, the simplest explanation is the one that is true.
When I look back on my time in Japan with the KISS principle in mind, one fact becomes devastatingly clear.
My kei car is cursed.
I’m not a bad driver. Really, I’m not. Aside from a few parking tickets, a speeding ticket, and accidentally rear-ending someone on the highway - BUT not being found at-fault by the officer who rolled up because the idiot I ‘hit’ just STOPPED in the middle of highway 401 for no reason and it was icy and I braked but my car kept going and kinda love tapped the dude’s car in the butt but there wasn’t really any damage to HIS car, and my pontiac sunfire's plastic hood took it all like a champ- I’ve never done anything wrong. Ever. For real.
Technically, I’m kind of a good driver. I can parallel park SO WELL.
It’s like my secret skill. Gayle Waters-Waters calls this kind of skill your nugget. Once people see it, they’ll know you’re the king. For me, my nugget is not knowing all the words to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back and reciting them with venomous intensity at wedding receptions. No, my nugget is my ability to park a car from the side, without hitting the cars in front of or behind the space I’m aiming for. Truly impressive, I know.
Disclaimer: this is not my nugget in Japan because a) nobody does parallel parks and there isn’t really any room on the side of the road to try it, and b) if I did happen upon conditions where it was possible, I’d have to do it from the opposite side of the car compared to home, so it might not work out as well as usual. My Japan-exclusive equivalent skill is the ability to back into a space so well that you almost can’t tell which car in the lot was parked by a gaijin. It’s still a nugget. But it’s slightly less delicious because McDonalds Japan only has mustard and barbecue dipping sauces.
When I finally got my car in Japan, I had to do a little driving demo with my boss and the head of the car leasing company watching before I was allowed to lease my car. And it was totally fine. My fellow ALT/dad Tom and I both received identical off-white EK wagons, which he dubbed the “goody goody cum drop” model. I was like ew no and named my car Taupe-Chan. Which then changed to トープちゃん. And since still nobody could understand what I meant and also apparently taupe is a completely different colour than what I thought, I finally dubbed my car Tofu-chan (after the colour, not the dog).
But despite my undeniable driving prowess, I abruptly began to find myself in precarious dumbass car-related situations on a semi-regular basis, and for what? For what???
WHAT WAS THE REASON?
* throws shoe *
Since that time, I keep getting into scrapes where I have to call up my boss and be like, moshi moshi? hey Nishi. look. i know we’ve talked about this. and i’m doing my best. and don’t worry, i haven’t hit any other stationary objects with my car. but sadly i do appear to have somehow crushed my car keys in my hand and rendered them unusable and am in need of a tow truck. arigatou ne. otsukaresama
By all accounts, it doesn’t make sense. Car trouble is happening to me with alarming frequency. It got to the point where I was seriously starting to doubt my driving ability. For a moment there I thought I actually might not be the best driver ever? Which is frankly a laughable notion. But then I had an epiphany. It’s not me. It’s my car. And I have evidence to prove it. Let’s look at the list of offences.
EXHIBIT A: The sheer volume of kuruma mishaps.
September 14, 2018. Chain Chain Chain, Chain of Fools. I had been driving in Japan for
less than a month. My passenger and I
did not see a chain that had been raised across the lane while leaving another friend’s apartment complex late at night. The chain took the front bumper off my car. I was interrogated by my supervisor, who tried to force a DUI confession out of me. Then I was formally reprimanded and made to prostrate myself in front of the department head and the owner of the chain (who I also had to buy expensive apology snacks for), all with tears uncontrollably streaming from my face. I had to drive a daisha (replacement car) for almost two months. My boss never let this one go and it really impeded our relationship.
November 8, 2018. I drove to the closest kuroneko yamato outlet (15 mins from my house) to ship my phone for repairs. I realized as I drove away that without my phone's GPS I wasn't completely sure how to get back home. I ended up stuck on the IC toll highway. I filmed the meltdown experience and it's a neat lil drinking game.
December 5, 2018. I pulled into the gas station and scraped the far side of my car on the raised concrete platform of the pump at the very bottom of the car. I was too close. This one is totally on me.
March 2019. My GPS told me to take a certain route to go to my friend Makiko's house. It was fine until I hit a dead end of landslide damage and had to precariously reverse uphill on a mountainside road with a 50+ foot drop. I scratched the driver's side door against some tree branches.
April 9, 2019. Youmetown, Jike. I went into the mall to get whiteboards for my students to use for a game. When I came out, I noticed that someone had scraped my car. Funny enough, they did not properly report to the police? I received no apology snacks. #rude
April 30, 2019. I scraped the left side-mirror of my car against a guardrail driving up a very narrow rice paddy road, trying to stay as far from the open cliff side as possible.
June 9, 2019. I was on my way to my favourite junior high's Sports Day. I took a corner a bit too tightly and my hubcap flew off into the mountains. I stopped and found it and it was completely shredded. I received a daisha while they waited for the new part.
September 8, 2019. A new hubcap had been put on my car. But evidently not attached properly. I picked up my friends to drive them to a church event. When we got there, I noticed my hubcap was gone. I had them looking out the window on the drive back, but we didn’t see it. The car leasing company were like oh ok and did not try to replace it a second time.
October, 2019. I was backing up into KT’s parking lot for a dance party, and kinda nudged the car behind me (I think it was Sarah’s). But I was crawling into the space so there was no damage to either car. So Cynthia and I never told her it had happened.
January, 2020. I guess my bluetooth speaker fell out of my bag on the walk from my house to car? I didn’t notice until I heard a pop! from under my car and felt a bump under one wheel. I got out and lo and behold, I had squashed my speaker in a hit and run. It still kinda works though but it’s not waterproof anymore so I had to put it in a ziplock bag to use it in the shower, which makes the sound too bass-y. Zannen.
March 11, 2020. I noticed a LOT of fluid making a puddle under my car in my parking spot. I took it in and they thoroughly examined it. I drove a daisha.
June 8, 2020. First day at a new school. My front wheel got stuck in the gaijin trap. I always knew this day would come. It was not as bad as I feared. The teachers at my school helped me and my boss surprisingly wasn’t mean about it. I guess she’s mellowed out. When I went into the BOE 2 days later for our monthly ALT meeting, she even patted my arm and asked if I was ok. Someone from the car company came and lifted it out of the gutter. They gave me a daisha. The car company owner made me promise to drive safely and have no more car trouble for the rest of my time here. Oh, Kitahara san. How I wish I could uphold our promise.
July 6, 2020. I turned my keys in the ignition to start the car. The key broke in six pieces in my hand. I didn’t even know that could happen. I live in fear of it breaking further and becoming completely unusable. As it is, I can barely start the car. KT insists that I am lying about what happened because I have weak lil noodle arms, and that I actually ran over my own car keys somehow. But I’m being 1000% serious when I tell you that I literally crushed the key in my hand because of my amazing super-human grip strength.
Update： As of July 19th the key has completely snapped off of the plastic and I'm taking nenkyu this week so I haven't tried to drive yet but I'm scared I won't be able to turn it; ruh roh.
EXHIBIT B: The lack of similar incidents when driving the replacement cars.
Cumulatively, I spent about 3.5 months (out of 23) driving a daisha, and nothing ever happened when I drove them. We’re talking about 15% of my total driving in Japan. I drive to and from school every weekday, 30-60 minutes round trip depending on which school. Bare minimum, that means about 3500 minutes (58 hours) of road-time, excluding weekend driving. A lot of this was in the immediate aftermath of the chain incident (it took a long time for the ordered part to arrive). I was driving a daisha for 6 of the first 8 weeks of Japan driving. Nothing went wrong. Not a thing. The longest incident-free period in Japan was about 100 days. It just feels fishy to me.
Exhibit C: I’ve had some GOOD DRIVING MOMENTS in Japan. Mostly involving having to reverse down a narrow road barely wider than my car, with rice paddies on either side, and NOT falling into the rice paddy. Or being one of the only people here who doesn’t nonchalantly drive through red lights, text and drive, or watch movies on an iPad while driving. And not to point fingers, but I’ve never accidentally filled my car up with diesel.
Exhibit D: If you still think I’m a bad driver and you say that to my face it’ll hurt my feelings.
You could argue that my past driving history speaks for itself. But also, fuck you because. All of the incidents I mentioned in the first part of this scholarly article happened over an eight year period from the ages of 16 to 24. The vast majority occurred in my first years of driving, when i was legally a child, and I was literally just so much stupider than I currently am. In the past six years I’ve only had one parking ticket, and no demerit points. My insurance premium in Canada has completely reset because it’s been long enough since I had any incidents, and my record is clean. I am considered a ‘low-risk’ driver.
You could also come at me with the argument that since driving in Japan is different, I’m not as amazing at driving here as I am back home. Honestly I think this is partially true. Between the flipped orientation of everything in the car, the driver’s side, and the side of the road you drive on; the narrow roads; the teeny tiny kei cars; the foreign traffic laws; and the tendency of Japanese businesses to install CHAINS THAT RISE OUT OF THE GROUND AT AN ARBITRARY TIME OF NIGHT, driving in Japan does take some getting used to. And I’m certainly not the only one to drive (or fall) into the gaijin trap. But I point you again to the fact that the majority of my first two months of driving in Japan were accident-free, replacement car times.
IN CONCLUSION, my car is cursed. Or at the very least, extremely suss and with some kind of personal vendetta against me. It’s one of the older cars being used in Higashi, but it’s unlikely they’ll take it off the road. If I end up having a successor this year, that person will likely drive the same car. Whoever ends up driving it, I’ll make sure the ALTs who are staying don’t tell them about the curse. I don’t want them to be freaked out or experience the placebo effect. Any and all future incidents with this car will be reported to me. If anything does happen to the person who next drives my car, I think we can all agree that would be indisputable proof that I’m not a bad driver. Tofu chan really do just be cursed. Cum-drop though she may be, my kei car is definitely NOT goody-goody. AMEN.
OH ALSO the snail is called elysia chlorotica, the green sea slug, I remembered all on my own without google so HA in your face professor houseman
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