First Driving Experience

Wednesday was my first day driving in Japan. Really scary. Lol. We went out with Toda-san, the guy in our office that has been handling all o four accommodations and dealing with all our problems. Marisa went first and did a pretty good job, except, because the blinker and windshield wipers are on opposite sides, like everything else about driving in Japan except the break and gas pedals, she kept turning on the wipers instead of the blinker, lol. So after driving for a while down the road toward Taisho and Towa she pulled off on the right and we switched places. So I make a U-turn, and because I was so relieved about not hitting anything, wasn’t thinking and started driving on the right side of the road, lol. Or in other words, the wrong side. With a few screams and flailing hands as I flip the windshield wipers on and off instead of the blinker in my panic, I was back on the correct side of the road…the left. By then, we were all laughing. At least there was no oncoming traffic. Poor Toda-san. He kept saying “bikkuri shita” which means I was shocked essentially, lol. We drove to my junior high school that I’ll be teaching at as well as two elementary schools that I might be teaching at. To get to these places I had to drive on some super narrow roads and make some tight turns, but everything was ok. I had some small freakouts while a car in the oncoming traffic was trying to overtake someone, meaning he was coming right at me and barely made it back into his own lane before we would have had a head on collision, and then I had to swerve into the oncoming traffic while I passed a bike guy. Then, because we stopped at those schools, the bike guy would always catch up and we had to pass him another 2 times, lol. Anyway, there were lots of tight squeezes on two lane streets that are really only big enough to be one lane, but it was all pretty funny. Toda-san seemed to be having a good time seeing us freak out at tight squeezes and such. It’ll take some getting used to the fact that people swerve into oncoming traffic at any time to pass bikes or parked cars or overtake traffic, and of course making right turns the way I would make a left back home, but I think I’ll be able to do it. Now I just have to decide whether to get a car of my own or not.