Apology

I would like to issue an official apology to the people of Japan, specifically the male population. I have much maligned you in recent weeks, although not without reason. Fortunately, you redeemed yourselves this morning. I want to stress, however, that while the people have redeemed themselves, the country has a ways to go before it will ever get out of the red and into the black in my book.

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This morning I got out of bed after a fitfull night of sleep, dressed, and made myself lunch. I was pretty happy with myself because even though I was operating on about 4 hours of sleep, I managed to get out of bed and actually prepare my own lunch, and still be on track for being on time to school.

Before we go any further, there's something I should explain about Japanese roads. Besides the fact that they are usually narrow, packing two lanes into what Americans would consider barely enough space for one, they are often lined on both sides by a 3-foot-deep gutter. Sometimes these gutters are covered, and sometimes they are not. It is not unheard of for a drunk foreigner to stumble into one of these gutters and end up with massive leg trauma. The road in front of my apartment fits this description: two-way, though barely big enough for one car, and lined by gutters reaching into the abbyss. There are metal plates covering the portion of the gutter between my parking space and the road. The problem is, there aren't enough of them. Sometimes they get shifted around, leaving a small gap.

Back to this morning. I was in a pretty good mood as I backed out of my space. I knew a small gap had developed in the plates, so I gritted my teeth as I backed out, hoping to miss it. I did. Then I started to go forward, turning to the left, and bam the car fell in the ditch. I tried going forwards and backwards, but nothing worked, so I got out to asess the damage. Yep, looked pretty stuck to me. Japanese cars tend to be light and small; a friend of mine had once lifted car out of one of these gutters all by himself. I thought I could do the same; I was wrong.

At about this time, an old man and a young man were walking past. The old man began to laugh at me, so I shot him a look of death. Then I went up to him, and said "What do you think I should do?" The young man was immediately on the case. He gave it a once over, then dissapeared somewhere. When he returned he had reinforcements. The old man had gone, and there were now three people at the scene. All of us tried to lift the car out, but to no avail.

"Hmm, it's too hard with 3 people," a middle-aged man who seemed to have taken charge said. "I think it will take 5."

With that, the young man dissapeared again, and returned with 2 more young guys. There were now 5 of us, but we still couldn't get the car out. One of the men called JAF, the Japanese equivalent of AAA, to come help us. They said it would be 40 minutes before they got there.

It was starting to rain, so one of the young men went and got me an umbrella from his work place. We stood shivering in the rain, waiting for JAF to show up. Some of the guys left because they had to be at work, but the man in charge stayed with me. We shivered in the rain a little more, and spoke of important topics: where I was from, my age, the narrowness of Japanese roads, the difficulty of the Japanese language, etc. At last the JAF guy showed up and by sticking planks of wood into the ditch, we were able to drive my car out.

So, thank you Japanese men, and I'm sorry for judging you so harshly.