To Boldly Go Where Many Have Gone Before

It’s time for a little car adventures update

After hibernating between May and June and doing refresh lessons with my trusted driving teacher three times in July, I am since boldly riding the car about once a week. Curving around on Niijima island was a nice boost (see Niijima blog here) but driving on a relatively lonely island versus driving in Kawasaki/Yokohama/Tokyo is quite a different caliber. Nevertheless, I am boldly going where many people have gone before…

I am still hella nervous before getting into the car. Driving itself is actually not that bad, but the fear of parking diminishes the joy of driving… I went to Coscto again in between and once to Ikea and twice to a Japanese furniture shop in hunt of a new kitchen chair. Amazing, hu? Lol. Then I found a new favorite supermarket, a Fuji store that has an always rather empty parking area on its roof. There I practice parking backwards twice from the left and once from the right before I do some shopping. Small adventures will make us stronger! To all these places I can go without the navi demanding additional attention.

The plan for tomorrow is to head down the 246 again and to go to Costco before typhoon No. 19 hits us.

In general I think the traffic behavior in Japan is pretty damn civilized. People park in the most impossible spaces due to lack of space, but I’m rarely being cut off or things like that. I drive very carefully and very politely towards the people around me at the moment and let cars pass, allow them to filter in etc. and drivers thank me with hand-signs or the Japanese version of a thanks by flashing hazard lights for a bit. I rarely get honked at, well, sometimes, e.g. when I left my garage recently and cut off a guy on a scooter who shot past me from a dead angle. But then, don’t drive so fast in a residential area where any time anywhere people leave their garages…

So, all in all the urban jungle is still pretty scary and I have not yet managed to leave it behind me to go to the Hakone mountains for example. Highway… hm… I haven’t been alone on the highway yet either, I admit. When I look at the Tomei express way though, which I underpass every morning on the way to work, cars on it are always crawling, not driving… just too crowded!

Well, I shall take it slow and try to reduce the nervousness level by taking familiar paths until, after 5000 km??? I finally feel better… Including Niijima I am slowly approaching my first 1000 km, not quite there yet, but soon

Guess I will have to drive to the dealer a couple of times now too, a) there has been a recall for the Suzuki Swift because of some dust collector somewhere and b) if I go there to have that part exchanged, they will notice the bump in the back which I made in my own garage and surely propose to get it fixed… In May, before the hibernating started, I don’t know what I did, but appear to have gone into neutral, rolled backwards in my sloping garage and hit a wooden storage casket in the back… nice bump! Sigh…

Such are the hustles of my “dramatic” car life