Live anywhere long enough and you are bound to experience the full gamut of “life”. Here in Japan seasons change. I get to see the fall colors, as well as experience cold winters where my only respite lies on the mountains through snowboarding or skiing. Then spring arrives. The birds start chirping again, grass starts to grow, and the cherry blossoms (sakura) explode with exuberance and color that makes you feel alive. Jen and I have finally found a rhythm that goes with being settled and used to a new country. Things aren’t as strange as they used to be: Small cars with tiny tires that make them look like toys. Little old ladies walking with bent backs searching for fresh mountain greens or mushrooms. Driving on the left side of the road. All of these things don’t really phase us anymore. And usually just when things are going well, life plays a joke to remind you to never become too comfortable. In my case, the joke took the form of a speeding ticket. We left one gorgeous Saturday morning to visit some friends up in the north of Nagano. We jumped on the expressway and grabbed the toll ticket. One hour later and $25 dollars less we arrived in the small town of Suzaka. I made some hurried turns as Jen read the directions. We sallied over a bridge and came to a stop light. No one was in front of me. This, I now know, was my downfall. As the light turned green I hit the gas and headed for our destination. The road was pretty wide for Japanese standards, and I was going a reasonable rate of speed. All of a sudden a man dressed in blue with a thin and pointless white helmet jumped out in the street and started flagging me down. At first I thought he was a construction worker stopping traffic to let a big truck out. As I waited with traffic slowly starting to build behind me, he motioned with the flag to make a turn. Gulp. I knew what was coming. I had seen this act before. I was getting a ticket. My fear was that they were pulling me over for speeding on the expressway. The speed limit is 80 kmh (by the way, that’s a whopping 48 mph. Can you imagine anyone going 48mph on I-5? Actually no one here obeys it either.) Jen started to go into panic mode. “What? Who? Why are they doing this?” I told her to calm down. “I am probably being pulled over for speeding” I told her. “Stay calm and stay in the car for a second. I don’t want you having a melt down or something.” I got out of the car and walked over. Now my Japanese is still very bad, and our friendly police officers didn’t really speak English that well either. But they motioned me over to have a look-see at this machine of theirs. It showed a number. 59. They then somehow got across that I was caught in between two stop lights going 59kph in a 40kph (35mph in a 25mph zone). Grrrrr. “You have got to be kidding me?” I said in plain English. They just looked at me the way a dog looks at you when you say key word like ‘beach’ or ‘walk’. I motioned that, okay, I was caught, so let’s get on with the ticket process. I had all the proper documents necessary. I had my valid California’s Drivers License, my International Driver’s Permit (which consequently does nothing at all except fund AAA. You pay ten dollars and they give you a document that in no way validates you to drive in a foreign country through testing or other means. You just buy it. But you’ve gotta have it nonetheless. If you are confused, it’s in the Bureaucracy 101 handbook.), and finally my alien registration card which states my residence, entry date into country, and purpose for being here. Our case crackers took all the documents in hand and started the document circus. Each officer had a different document and recorded it on a different piece of paper. Then they all came together in conference and discussed the matter at hand. The ‘matter’ was they didn’t know what the hell they were doing. Finally the head cheese asked me for my passport, and I told him, “My alien registration card is the reason I don’t have to carry my passport. It has all the info you need.” Obviously I said this much slower and in simple speak. A nodding of the head and a smile. I thought, “Great, he understands.” “Passport please.” Came the request again. “Dude, no passport. Ja nai. I don’t have it man. It’s at my house. You are out of luck.” Oh how wrong would I be. There were more confused looks and a bit of a stalemate, but the process moved on. I filled out some more paperwork, and found out the ticket was going to cost me 100 dollars. “Okay,” I thought, “I can accept that.” (By the way, we have a friend here who got caught speeding on the expressway. He was about 25mph over the limit, going about 72 mph, and his fine was...are you ready...$800 dollars. I suppose I got away unscathed.) Then came the hitch. I had to return to the town of Suzaka with my passport so they could finish up the “paperwork.” Then and only then could they give me the receipt for the ticket, thus allowing me to pay for it. I fought and struggled to see their logic, or lack there of. I told him, “Look, my alien registration card start date is only eight months ago. This more or less proves without a doubt that I am here less than one year. Look, it’s good for ten years.” But he wasn’t having it. I tried every bit of reasoning, but nothing was working. They wouldn’t let me fax my document pages from the police station in my town nor any other logical combination of possibilities you are all thinking of at while reading this. Now why would I need my passport? Because Japanese law states that US citizens must apply for a Japanese driver’s license after one year of driving on an IDP (International Drivers Permit). They wanted to check my passport and make sure with absolute certainty that I had not been in the country more than one year. You’ve gotta love small towns where the police have nothing better to do. Here’s a funny side note: I am about to take the actual driving part of the driver’s test in one month. I will fail the first time, there is no doubt. Why? First, the command directions are in Japanese. Second, you have to have the course more or less memorized. There isn’t an actual road test. It’s all on a closed course. And thirdly, the rules. If you fail to stop at an intersection with stop signs for more than five whole seconds....points off. If you fail to blatantly look in every mirror while making a sound of hardship and struggle to acknowledge you have looked before making a turn...points off. When braking, you have to pump the brakes to avoid “lock up” even though anti-lock brakes have pretty much eliminated that problem altogether, even if you are going 20mph, and even if the pavement is dry. If not, points off. Before getting into the car you must check underneath the automobile for any babies. Yes, you heard me. See the Japanese are funny like this. One bad thing happens in the country, and they make it a new rule that will prevent it from ever happening again. A few years ago a baby crawled underneath a car and was crushed. So now the proper preventative measures are in place to sidestep this travesty from ever happening again. But maybe the funniest thing of all will be when I actually do fail the driving test. I will walk right out the door, get into my big car, and drive away, fully legit. My IDP doesn’t expire for another four months. Back to the present moment. The cops and I have gone back and forth on what should be sufficient documentation. We have called his sister who speaks some English to try and get the message across. We have pantomimed driving back up here another day. We have ruled out the possibility of calling my principal to clear the matter. And we have finally come to a resolution that I will have to return on a weekday to the police station to finish the ticket process. So this means I have to take a vacation day from work, pay the 60 bucks to drive the expressway again, and pay for about 30 bucks in gas. Garr, I was not liking it. But there is a saying in Japan that goes, “Shoganai”. It means that “It can’t be helped”. The next Monday I drove up and went through the process of meeting my ticket issuer. The first guy to start the paper work spooked me out a bit. He had some sort of nervous tick and trouble swallowing. Every now and then a mumble would slur its way out, and I thought I was in the twilight zone for a second. Another few guys came in and now the fun began. They needed to record the information in my passport. As they opened it up an instant stream of ooohhhs and aaahhhhs start to flow out. “Where is this one from” referring to the stamp of Mexico. “Mexico” I say. “And this one. What about this one?” He asks like a child tasting an assortment of Jelly Bellys. “Ah, that is South Korea, and this one is Costa Rica.” “Whaaaaa, Costa Rica. Segoi (wow).” They moan and groan. I think, “Great, I have come all the way up here so they can ogle over my passport. Just peachy. But they were nice enough fellows, and once I got over the fact that I was getting a ticket, I realized they were pretty helpful. The one guy even drove with me to the post office to show me how to pay the fine. That’s not to say that I didn’t have a bit of fun with them. I figured since it was my vacation day, I was going to enjoy myself. Sometimes I would answer a question with yes. But they would repeat the question just to make sure they had the correct answer. I would then answer no. I got some crazy looks of confusion and wonderment. They were most likely doubting their sanity, and I was just laughing on the inside. It was all good fun, and after I took my blood pressure on the automatic machine stationed in the room we were in, showed the police the results of my heartbeats per minute, and took the test a few more times to verify a sample without outliers, I gave the correct answers, paid the bill, and went home. After paying the ticket at the Post Office, I dropped my totally non-threatening police officer back at the station. As he got out of the car he spun around and asked politely, “Please drive slower.” I just laughed and said okay. And with that I was on my way back home. | 
