Spring showers, April flowers
Kids and wife in bed, got home late from work, just ate dinner by myself, which explains the urge to write. Probably should be tired, but I’m not. Anyhoo…
Spring is here, and April is around the corner—which makes me think of the opening line of The Canterbury Tales: “Whan that aprille with hise shoures soote…”. One day, I’d like to read that work again—but aside from the plum blossoms (ume in Japanese), today was your average gray, wet day in “Raincouver.”
Work is going pretty well. I’m happy to be working for Scotiabank. It’s nice to be part of a big organization with some good employee benefits. Employees of the bank are treated quite well and I’m doing something I enjoy doing. Plus I’m learning a lot. In my last job as an English teacher, I felt I had come to a cognitive dead end. Of course, there were always things to learn from my students, and I could have been more conscientious in trying to ameliorate my teaching skills, but I wasn’t really growing mentally or otherwise exercising my brain. I do miss teaching little kiddies, though. Gosh those first-grade girls I used to teach were cute.
One thing: I’m sure glad I don’t drive to work anymore. I take the bus downtown every day, and it’s a real relief. Of course, the “loser cruiser” suffers from more than its fair share of annoyances–the often overheated, stuffy atmosphere, heat on full blast with the windows shut up tighter than a nun’s corset; the commingled odors of not-so-surreptitious farts, perfume, and B.O. (which is definitely a function of the ethnicity of the passenger in question, isn’t that right curry-eaters? hint hint); and the experience of being sardines in a tin. But if you’re in a car, it’s a different kind of hell. It’s a Sartrean existentialist hell, one in which every other driver is the bane of your existence.
Plus, my bus pass lets the whole family ride free on Sundays, I can write it off against my taxes, and they have employer-discounted bus passes available. I’m thinking that the money we save not having to maintain a car means we can take a really nice vacation once a year, like somewhere tropical.
Mom’s old car, which she handed down to me a few months ago, went and gave up the ghost quite recently (the brakes died when we were a few blocks from home, and we managed to limp home using the handbrake). The 1987 Bimmer now sits derelict in the driveway. If I were a redneck, I’d have half a mind to remove the wheels and put it up on blocks, leaving it to oxidize in the drizzle. But even if I had a functioning car, you couldn’t pay me to drive downtown.
In my last job, I was always rushing from place to place in the company car. I was on tight schedules going from school to company to university and so on, and had to drive–or felt I had to drive—very aggressively in order to arrive early, allow myself to eat, brush my teeth, prepare for my lessons, and what have you. I had these great shortcuts, taking side streets across the whole of Utsunomiya. I often paralleled the Shinkansen tracks, which was a great little route with very little traffic. A route I thought of as my route, and I got annoyed whenever I encountered somebody in front of me who didn’t know how to drive (which pretty much meant everyone else). I would cross major roads from my little side streets. And I wouldn’t do things the standard, meek Utsunomiya way, which is to wait until the road was completely clear. I would dash across, finding gaps between oncoming cars. I had it so well timed, I once came within a hair’s breadth of T-boning another car, just gunning it across the intersection as he passed to my left. Fortunately, and thanks once or twice to my wife for spotting things I didn’t see, I never had an accident in Japan (which is good because if you hurt someone, they have a special prison for traffic offenders), but I came close once or twice, and I knew it was just a matter of time. It was just a matter of time if I did something stupid, or if someone else did something stupid, like a cyclist or pedestrian carelessly dashing out in front of me.
And I knew if I killed a pedestrian, even if it wasn’t technically my fault, I would have had that on my conscience. It’s just too much of a mental burden to bear. I’m fine with taking the kids and wife somewhere on the weekends. But I am through with the daily car commute under time pressure. Been there, done that. And there have been plenty of warning signs along the way.
I saw more than my fair share of accidents while driving in Japan, some of them very scary incidents. A couple years ago on a rainy night, I saw a car knock a cyclist flying off his bike, with the cyclist immediately getting up, running over to the car and bowing, even though it was 100% the driver’s fault. Another time, in a torrential downpour, I saw a motorcyclist wipe out bad about a hundred meters in front of my car.
And then a few weeks ago, my mom hit a cyclist in her new car, and just yesterday, a few feet in front of me, I saw a cyclist plow right into a car that made an illegal right-hand turn. Like I said: stick a fork in me, I’m done with driving.
Will post a few family pics to wind up this post. Take care.
