that time i drove into a chain

I had been driving in Japan for less than a month. I went to my friend’s house, and gave my other friend a lift there. At about 11:30PM, when trying to make my way out of the apartment complex and back to the main road, I mistakenly drove straight instead of turning. I didn’t see the chain that stretches across the entire lane for some reason, bisecting it in two. I drove into the chain.

The front bumper of my car was dragged off and I drive over it. It made a very loud screechy noise. One Jpaanese guy comes out onto his balcony and looks at us. Suuuuper awkward. Especially because he was hot (idk I always feel more judged and shamed when it's by someone attractive?).

We were like well fuck, this sucks. We figured we could just go on our merry way and deal with the problem in the morning, because the only damage was to our vehicle and the car leasing company definitely wouldn't be open until the next day. We picked up the bumper, popped it in the backseat, and rolled out.

I got my friend to message our boss about what had happened on the way home. Turns out, we had just fled the scene of a crime. Japan’s laws be different, homie! Neither one of us knew at the time, but if there’s any damage to any property, you have to call the cops.

So anyway, the next day I drove to school as usual. I left extra early because, y'know, the whole front of my car was exposed. At about 10am, an employee from the car company came to my school in a replacement car. We switched keys and I was told to follow him back. I had to sign papers for the repairs at the car company. My boss informed me that I had to take forced vacation time from 10am. After finishing at the car company, I had to go to the city hall. I sat in a small room with no windows and waited as my employers came and went from the room. They repeatedly asked me about every detail about what had happened. I was interrogated and felt that they were trying to get me to confess to drinking and driving. I hadn't known about the rule for always calling the police, but I of course was aware of the strict 0.00 BAL requirement for driving in Japan. I've never drank alcohol before driving, even in Canada where the legal limit is not 0. I insisted from the start that no, I definitely had not been drinking, and any of the witnesses who had been there could confirm this.

They asked leading questions like 'but you had been drinking, hadn't you?', 'how long before driving away did you drink your alcohol', 'you know that you'll lose your job and be deported, right?', 'if you drink and drive your face will be in the newspaper and you will bring shame on our government', etc.

Very early on in this interaction I started crying. I'd always taken medication to regulate my anxiety (I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder), but all of my Canadian prescriptions were Schedule 1 prohibited substances in Japan. So I'd had to go cold turkey to come here. And I had started seeing a Japanese psychiatrist, but he'd prescribed me tricyclic antidepressants (the gold standard, if you're a housewife with 'hysteria' in the 1950s), which take ~8 weeks to work, so I wasn't seeing any benefits of the medication yet (nor did I ever, tbh). The bottom line was, the mortification and fear I felt in this situation stacked up on all of the stress I was already dealing with in my first months of living here.

While my emortional reaction made them uncomfortable, it didn't inspire them to go easy on me, let up, or accept that I was obviously contrite and taking what had happened seriously. I sat in that room for hours. I couldn't calm down or stop crying for more than 10 minutes. All the hyperventilating and stress made me feel very lightheaded and detached from my body and the situation, until it just didn't feel real anymore and I was full-out dissociating.

After all was said and done and I was winding down from my shameful emotional state into corporate-approved neutrality (but in reality, I had noped out of the entire situation), they told me I had to go apologize to the head of the education department and receive a formal reprimand. Of course this was a super shameful and embarrassing semi-public display- glad I didn't have to be there to witness it. Then they drove me to a fancy store by the train station, had me purchase expensive omiyage (as a bribe for the owner of the apartment complex where the chain was to NOT press charges), and coached me on the exact words to say.

So I went and did a dogeza bow (on all fours), as instructed. I blubbered out the closest approximation to my scripted apology that I could manage through my post-cry hiccups. The owner of the apartment complex, a middle-aged man living in an extremely fancy traditional Japanese house just next door to the property, appeared quite bewildered by our presence there at all. By the time we showed up (about 3pm), a cursory glance showed they'd already bent the poles (which held the chain up, and had been bent when the chain was pulled) back into their upright position, more or less.

We went back to the BOE and I received my final lecture, with instructions for how to properly apologize to the car company people (with gifts, duh!) when I returned to collect my car.

My supervisor never really recovered from my negligence. Over the next two years I saw her get closer and closer to my fellow ALTs, to the point of laughing smiling and touching them on the arms. I did get an arm touch, about 2 months before my contract ended. I'm not alone in thinking she unfairly let this incident cloud her perspective of me. Most of the people I've spoken to at our BOE agree that she doesn't like me, and this is likely why.

The story actually ended up spreading. Most people don't know it was me it happened to, but I've actually heard it retold (like to me, by people who heard it from someone who heard it from someone else etc., and have no idea which BOE it occurred in, let alone that they're talking to the main character herself). If nothing else, I hope this is a cautionary tale for everybody: if you so much as scratch your car, call the freaking cops on yourself or live to regret it.

It's a shame, but what are you gonna do? Stew about it for two years and write a call-out post?