“What I did over my Summer Vacation” / I’m a Hit!!

What I did over my Summer Vacation:

1.      The 1^st thing I did was make pancakes.  With a month and 2 days off, I had enough free time to cook whatever crazy things I could imagine…

I gave up on that idea after making pancakes just once.

2.      The second day of vacation, a guy I knew from years and years ago called to say that he’d like to climb a mountain with me.

“Well, …I guess I have some free time.” I said.  (I had 31 days left.)

“It’s 1,293 meters high.” he tells me.

“Alright. We can go drinking after!” I said.  (I know a good place.)  He thought for a moment.

“But I think it’s difficult to climb.” he said.  “We should sleep in a lodge at the top.”  “What?! It couldn`t be that hard!  Why don’t we just go up/ down, then get lunch?  I know a good Indian buffet!　…then we can go drinking!”

I climbed Mt. Fuji with him 9 years before and although it wasn’t abjectly necessary he insisted on staying at a lodge then too.  It was expensive, and the sleeping bag they gave me had somebody’s old gum in it.  It ruined my shirt.  I thought I talked him out of it this time, but he went and reserved a tiny space (for the 2 of us and another friend of his to sleep in).  We went and climbed it the day after he came back from Cambodia.  It was pretty, but it sucked!

3.      On the second week of vacation, I got an e-mail from my company telling me I would have to write several essays to compensate for not going to their training session.

They had sent me a letter a few weeks earlier to inform me that I would be expected to spend 4 days in a suit in another city.  It would take 3 hours and more than $50 to get there (1 way).  This is a significant drain on time and money, but no one made any mention of a hotel or any travel reimbursement.  They did say that you could skip going if: you used your vacation time, or if you already had to work at that time.  I was intent on going home for Christmas and I needed those vacation days, so I decided I would “working” (whether they asked me to or not) and thereby exempt from going.  It is surely better to pull a few weeds from flowerbeds in shorts for an hour a day by your own volition, than it is to be forced to spend 4 full days in a suit in a conference room in a city I don’t care for incurring a great many other costs “learning” what I already know.

So I didn’t go, and I didn’t use my vacation days.  They called to check in. then decided that having me write a few essays would benefit them more than me showing up to school and making work for myself.  The message they sent said that the essays would have to be submitted in a format – that I don’t have the software for.  They said that they would have to be a certain length – that I could not verify without the same software. They would also all be due the day before they sent me the message.

I wrote to ask about the 1^st two criteria, and to say I wouldn’t cross the time barrier merely to complete essays before I was told I had to begin them, …but that I would, however, do them soon.

I finished them a few dreary long days after, and further revised them several times while waiting for a reply about the length and format.  I wrote several more times to try to elicit a response of any kind, but 4 months later I still have yet to hear anything whatsoever in regard to them.  I wasted a great many summer leisure hours trying to think of crap to say in those stupid damn essays…

It still beats going to training anyway.

4.      I spent some portion of the time I had saved by not going to Saitama, looking out the windows of our house a lot.

I had been planning to ride my nice new racing bike all around our new area for a large part of the summertime, but it was overcast 90% of the time, raining often, and I could not bear to get my nice new racing bike wet/ get dirt from the road stuck in the drive chain, so:

5.      I looked out the windows an awful lot more – hoping the sun might clear up a large enough patch of sky.

6.      Sometimes, when it looked like the sun might come out, I’d change into cycling clothes, but the clouds around here regroup very quickly, so I’d wind up standing at the front door in padded shorts watching it rain.  I usually had to give up before I ever even made it out the door.

7.      One day when the clouds weren’t too too dark looking, I rode my nice new racing bike up a mountain.

I generally go up and down this same mountain a lot, but this summer – the weather was awful, so I only went three times.  It rained on me once, and I got a flat tire on my way back down the long long long long hill (ie: what is usually the fun part) another time.

I didn`t want to walk 15 kilometers downhill in my cycling shoes – it`s hard enough to walk very short distances in them.  There aren’t many pockets in my spandex suit, so I didn’t have my telephone, money, or anything else useful for that situation, so I had to get myself home as best I could.  (I rolled back home as slowly as I could and tried to keep the rims from hitting any large bumps or crevices.)  When I got home, I got some money, changed shoes, then carried my bike to the bike shop.  The guy who works there advised me to take a taxi back next time – just to be sure the bike isn’t needlessly damaged.  It seems that in Japan you can take a taxi without any money if you just explain to the driver that you need to go somewhere to get money.  You’d have a hard time finding a taxi waiting around at the top of a mountain to try it out though.   …And I couldn’t have called for one without a phone.  The bike shop guy asked me about taxis in America, checked my bike, and decided I only had to replace the tube and the valve attachment.

8.       My friend’s friend also likes cycling.  I know because he told me, and because he fondled my nice new racing bike for over an hour while we were talking in the kitchen.  (I keep it in the kitchen because it’s the only place I can keep it safe and dry.)  He asked how often I ride it, and I said “I use it every day it doesn’t rain, which is not at all these days.”  He said he’d come visit again sometime and we go roll around Yamanashi together <and impress the ladies>.

<I threw in the part about impressing the ladies, because they’d have to be impressed.>

It never happened anyway – him coming back to do that I mean…

The ladies are still impressed when it‘s just me rolling around though, I’m sure.

His friend, who is my friend actually came to my house on his way home from Cambodia, so he had his wife ship a box of his climbing supplies to my house the night he arrived.  The box arrived some hours before he did.  It was big, and it got me curious, so I looked the name of the mountain up on the internet while waiting for his bus to arrive.  It’s not 1,293 meters high like he said – it’s 3,192 meters high,

…like he didn’t say.

The summit is just a little lower than Mt. Fuji’s, but it’s generally considered a much harder climb.  I also consider it harder, not so much to climb, but to get my sorry ass back down.  I thought with all the cycling I generally do when it doesn’t rain for a month straight, I ought to be in very good shape for a quick jaunt up and down a little mountain.  But then it wasn’t a little mountain, nor was any other part of my hypothesis correct.

Those 2 guys had been up late packing their bags as full of supplies as they could.  I was up late watching them do it, and trying to get as drunk as I could, so I could manage to get to sleep earlier.  They saw me put a 2 liter bottle of tea in my backpack that next morning, and recommended I take another bottle at least; They had 8 liters between the 2 of them which struck me as “a lot to carry uphill”.  They brought heavy duty rain suits, and a full change of clothes each; I brought a windbreaker, and a change of socks.  I felt stupid for bringing my umbrella, but the weather was always crappy then, and I didn’t have waterproof hiking boots like they did – I had some thin running shoes I wanted to keep dry if it did rain.

And sure enough, it started raining about 3 hours into our ascent.  They put their rubber rain suits on while I stood in my bathing suit and sleeveless shirt determined to keep my feet as dry as possible.  No matter how wet you get, you can always get wetter/ colder from the fresh newer wetness anyway.

My little cycling backpack has a built in rain cover which didn’t keep anything dry exactly, but it did keep my money and extra socks from getting totally saturated.  My friend’s friend theorized that it wouldn’t rain so much as we got higher and higher up in the clouds.  I liked that idea, but I’m sorry to say he was totally wrong about that.  The thunder and lightening was scarier when we got above the tree line.  I used my umbrella anyway (thinking I could toss it up and to one side if I saw any electricity shooting towards me).  There were no trees that high up, so I might have had a second’s warning, which might have been enough.  I’m glad I still don’t know the answer to that…

It stopped raining an hour after we got to the lodge. We got there at 2:45pm, and the other 2 were asleep by 4.  I didn’t have anything dry to change into, but I don’t think anyone did.  The sleeping bags there were warm anyway, warmer still considering how many people they packed into such a tight space.  All those people woke up around 4:15/ 4:45am.  My friend insisted on staying overnight so he could see the sunrise from the top of the mountain, but he didn’t seem at all inclined to wake up that next morning.  A series of sharp shakes from me and his other friend, and pairs of other people slamming the door open and shut as they went out got him up.

I had slept in my wet clothes, which seemed to have dried them quite well; Polyester and nylon are good like that.  The other two changed before sleeping and again before going out to see the sunrise, but I don’t see how they would have had anything drier to put on.

The sunrise was nice enough, but I can’t say I understand all this “sunrise from the top of a mountain” romantic bullshit.  It’s the same sunrise you can see from the ground, …if you’re ever inclined to crawl out of bed for it.

I was our star climber, probably because it uses the same muscle groups needed for cycling, also because I was carrying a lot less weight in my bag and using 2 walking sticks.  The diminished oxygen levels made me light headed at times, but I never wanted/ needed a rest.  Going down was horrible though!  It took a little over 7 hours for me to hobble down from the peak to the bus stop at the base of the mountain.  I still had three quarters of my bottle of tea then.  I’d say we all over prepared, except for my friend, who had finished 3 cans of oxygen and also eaten all the food he bought to give as souvenirs from Cambodia.  He and his friend had to wait – probably long periods for me to reach them.  I’d sit for a minute, then get a head start, then they’d reach and pass me quickly.  I know I was going as fast as I was able to then, because an old lady passed me 2 times and gave me some ointment.  I was also racing to make it to the Indian buffet before it closed its lunch service.

Going to the Indian buffet was the best part about climbing that mountain.  Honestly, I could have skipped the whole climbing up a mountain in a thunderstorm part, and just gone to the Indian buffet happy.

The 2^nd best thing about that trip was finally getting out of my wet shoes.

The 3^rd best thing about climbing that mountain was the view.

The 4^th best thing about climbing that mountain was the satisfaction that comes from not having to climb that mountain again anytime soon.

9.     I could bearly walk for the 7 days that followed.  I played video games, fixed up my essays for work a bit more, and finished up the painting I was asked to do.

10.      I was asked to paint a picture for my old Japanese teacher and get it to her in Saitama by the middle of August.  I think she asked me to do it in early June, which is plenty of time for the painting to get finished, and adequate time for it to dry provided it isn’t touched too much.  I thought it most sensible to play outside whenever the weather allowed it, and paint when the rain from the rainy season deprived me of the other option, but it only rained twice during that whole “rainy season”, and I didn’t start on the painting in earnest until after I finished my essays during the “summer”.

11.   My wife went to Saitama to visit her mother in mid-August, so I went with her to: deliver the painting, use the art store gift certificates I was given years ago (that no art store anywhere accepts), and buy some soy ham in Tokyo.  I had to do stuff with my wife and her mother that whole weekend instead.

I don’t remember what I had to do.  It’s usually important stuff though, like: sitting around on the floor of their house until the whole weekend is drained away and I can finally go home again.  Consequentially, the only thing I got accomplished this time was to get the painting delivered.

12.    It was rainy that Monday, but finally sunny the Tuesday that followed, so I finally got to go out and ride my nice new racing bike up that mountain – like I like to do.   I went up.  I went around.  I stopped at a waterfall.  I had a lot of fun!  Then I woke up in the wet dirt bleeding.

13.    Someone shouted: “Are you alright?”

It came from a white minivan which was above and beside my head.  Suddenly waking up in the mud is disconcerting, and I don’t like being woken up at the best of times, so I may have sounded a trifle cranky when I responded:

“Of course I’m alright!  …   …Why the hell am I on the ground?!!”

The answer to my question came in the form of some dickwad walking into my field of vision and waving his car’s dis-attached side mirror in my face.  I turned back to look at the car.  Sure enough, it was missing the driver’s side mirror. I applied the math:

< Me unexpectedly on rocks and in mud + pain + damaged car in my proximity>

“No Way!!” I said.

None of them realized they were supposed to respond by shouting “Yes way!”

So, I said something like: “Sorry about your car man!” as I ran my hand over the painful half of my face.  It hurt, but it’s not like my eyes were hanging out of my head.  When you suddenly wake up on the side of the road and don’t know how you got there, you take what consolation you can!  -  If that isn’t a rule, it should be.

The 1^st voice asked if I was okay again.  I was still accessing the situation.  I didn’t see any bones sticking out, and I had all of my teeth.  My upper lip was bleeding outside and in.  I soon had a dried blood moustache shaped just like Hitler’s which gave way to a small scar there in the days that came.  The inside of my mouth was much too bloody for comfort but again, considering I was still alive, it was manageable.  A while later I took a sip of the lemon water I had left in my water bottle, and it stung like a bitch.

Someone else appeared, pointed to his neck, then me, then made a strange spinning pointing gesture, then lit a cigarette.  It sounds more confusing than it was, my head hurt too.  I wiped my hand off on my leg before touching it to the back of my head.  I had had the impression that a large portion of the top of my head was gone.  Actually touching that area was ‘reassuring’ in that respect, except that it felt altogether like something you shouldn’t poke your dirty (broken) fingers into.  I got up to see if I could get up, and to get out of the mud, and because I was completely surrounded by jagged rocks and people looking down.  There was a concerned looking old woman, a less concerned looking old man, some kid, the lady who kept speaking English somehow for some reason, a guy who smoked, and the woman he was with.  The guy who hit me was not far off, looking over his ugly boring car again.

The others asked me if I was really okay several more times and had me look at myself in the mirror posted in the curve in the road.  It was too far away to make anything out in detail, but you could see blood all over me.  It somehow ran down the back of my head, came forward around my ear, made a small pool where my neck and collar bones meet, then it dripped all the way down into my belly button.  Several spots around my right eye and beneath my nose were bleeding too – not as dramatically as in “Rocky 4”, but in a similar fashion.  “Wow!” I said.  They asked me if I wanted an ambulance.  I didn’t want to pay for an ambulance.  Also:  rule #5.  The guy who was smoking said they could drive me to a hospital, but I didn’t want to leave $4,000 worth of bicycle sitting alone by a river with nothing but a flimsy wire lock to secure it.  He found my bike 15 feet downhill from where I landed.  I was happy that it was also in one piece, but it surely wouldn’t be allowed into the hospital with me and I wouldn’t want to leave it outside there with just the one thin wire lock either.  The smoking guy tried to put my bike in the back of their van.  I’m glad it didn’t fit, as I’m  not comfortable riding myself or my bike to the hospital with someone who can’t drive for shit.  It’d be an awkward conversation enroute too: “So, you hit lots of people with your car or am I special?”

The 1^st woman suggested I look at the back of my head in the mirror, which would have convinced most people to go to the hospital, if it wasn’t actually impossible to see the back of your own head.  The driver held his detached side mirror up so I could see that reflection in the mirror at the side of the road, but it was still too far off the road to see anything but loads of blood .

Someone put a giant square band aid on my head while someone else asked me what country I am from and someone else called the police.

It was one of 3 weeks per year when most people have a few days off, so there were cars around from everywhere and there had been 4 other accidents before ours.  We had to wait for a little more than an hour for the police to show up.  Mostly I just sat on a fence along one side of the road bleeding, while the guy who hit me complained about the mosquitoes, and his mother wiped blood off of me.  Sometimes someone would ask me something like:

•       “Didn’t you look in the mirror?”

(There were no cars in the mirror when I did look, and we crashed on the far side of what the mirror does show – so it wouldn’t have mattered if I did or did not look.)  I did look besides.    

•     “Why did you ride a bike?

(in a scenic place on a nice day)

• “How much was that bike anyway?”

(They became noticeably more hostile when I answered that one!)

•     “How long stay Japan?”

• l       “Where was that stubble-faced foul-breathed old man I called Papa when the merry-go-round broke down?”

Two Policemen arrived on motor-scooters, one and then the other.  The 1^st policeman asked the driver where his car was at the time, how fast he was going, and took photos of the chalk circles he drew, as well as a skid mark my bike’s tire made, and the spot where I woke up.    I was not initially concerned with the quality of the driver’s responses, because when a car hits a bicycle in Japan, the car is pretty much always declared more than 90% responsible.  I didn’t get to hear too much of what he said either, because when the second policeman showed up, we split up.  The other policeman asked me:

•         “Do you have your foreign resident’s card?”

“No.”  and I showed him the limited pocket space in my spandex cycling suit.

“You’ll have to bring it in to the police station later to show me.”

“Alright.”

•    “What happened?”

“I have no idea.  I was coming around that corner then the next thing I knew I was on the ground in the mud by those rocks.”

•     “You don’t remember anything at all?”

“I went around that corner a little wide to keep the car behind me from trying to pass me there, ‘cause that’d be dangerous for me right there, but then… No.  Nothing!”

•       “How fast were you going?”

I know I was going a speed I felt safe traveling at, but I don’t know the number to express it.  It was like a very fast run.  I took a wild guess and said “35 or 40”, which might even be accurate, but he kindly wrote 30 in his book – which was the speed limit, and just as likely to be accurate.

  Beyond my own waist, shoe size, and bicycle frame, I only bearly understand numbers as units of measurement.  I know a foot is longer than an inch – 11 inches longer, but I could never find something either a foot long or an inch long unless I was at a hotdog stand, or I had a yardstick. (And that’s assuming foot long hotdogs are actually one foot long).  Consequentially, all my measurements are expressed qualitatively:  The width of a fat man, as heavy as a handful of dry sand, etc.

  If I had been watching the speed on my bike computer while coming around the corner, I would know my speed, but it’s typically better for a person to pay attention to what they’re doing when traveling downhill around a corner on a bike with very thin wheels that are prone to locking up and skidding.

•       “Did you have any lights on?” he asked me.

“Just the rear light.  It was sunny out then…”

•      “Were you coming uphill or downhill?”

“Downhill”

•       “You know this is a one way street don’t you?”

“What!?

He didn’t ask me if I had anything to add, and I wouldn’t have thought it important to then either.  I expected it was a simple matter of the car hitting me, and their insurance paying for whatever medical + repair bills I might have.

The 2 times I was hit before, the police made a point to ask me what punishment I thought the drivers deserved.  You can ask that their license be taken away and it is not uncommon for it to happen that way.  But this driver knew that I couldn’t remember anything.  He knew what a racing bicycle costs to replace.  He had more than an hour to look over the surrounding area and formulate a plan.  He had 6 family members traveling with him to give whatever supporting evidence he wanted (as needed).  The mosquitoes thought he had delicious blood.   AND

…he was a dentist!!!

I don’t mean that to sound like I think that dentists are second rate people.  I personally have nothing against them.  I’d even consider being friends with a dentist, if they could only cut back on all that:

“Hey everyone! Check me out!! I’m a real dentist!!  I know about teeth!’ crap.  My wife said the same thing after arguing with him over the phone several times.  He’s probably not the total asshole he seems to be.  He just won’t admit that his driving had anything to do with me spending 15-20 hours in a hospital.

I think it was 15- 20 hours in the hospital, but my watch band gave up the 1^st week of summer vacation, and I have no concept of: length, weights, speeds, temperatures, or time, as I believe I’ve mentioned.

After 30 minutes(?) or so of talking to the police, they decided they would decide on the “Type of accident” at another time, since I didn’t know what the hell they meant by that, and I was still bleeding more than a little.  My policeman checked that I had the motor skills necessary to ride my bike back home by having me touch each of my fingers to my thumbs.  I told him how the one finger hurt a lot, and I thought it was weird it would hurt that much but still be able to move.  Contrary to what everyone all throughout my life has said, being able to move something does not mean that it isn’t broken.  The doctor the week after said that ‘trying to move it wasn’t a good idea, and probably contributed to the bones being out of alignment’.

It hurt a lot too trying to get back home down the mountain with all the vibrations and bumps in the road and discomfort that came with needing fingers to use my breaks on those hills.

14. When I got home there was a notice from the post office saying they had received a package for me.  I had been waiting a long long time for it.  (I get things online periodically, and my mom ships them to me overseas about twice a year.  Christmas is one occasion, my birthday/ July 5^th is the other.  It was August 16^th when I got hit, so …I had been waiting for some time.)  If I had gotten that box earlier, I may well have been hit by a car and ruined the new handlebar tape, and cycling suit that I got, so as bad as my luck might be, it can always be worse.

I stepped inside to show my wife what happened.  She already knew I got hit by a car because I sent her a message:

“got hit by a car. Nice people from Tochigi.  Gotta’ wait for the police.”

She came to the door slowly, because she was watching TV.  After a long pause there were footsteps and she asked if I was alright.  I said I was probably, mostly, but she looked squeamish.

“Why didn’t they call you an ambulance?”

“I didn’t want to pay for an ambulance!”

“What are you talking about?!”

“Ambulances are super expensive!  And I don’t really need one.”

“What?  What do you mean?”

“It costs a lot of money to use an ambulance! And this isn’t so bad.”

“What are you talking about?!  Ambulances are free!”

“What?  Really?!  Free!!  Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me this shit?”

She asked me if I knew anything about the people who hit me.  I said it was some dentist, and she looked well and truly happy to hear that.  (Dentists have a lot of money.  She likes money.) She asked if I’d seen the back of my head, which was, again, well intentioned but, again, impossible.  I asked her to take a couple pictures, so I could see and share.

Now I have had problems in the past, …but I’ve never seen my own skull exposed before.

“It looks like I was in an awful fight.”

“Yeah.”

“You should see their car”.

“Why?  Is it nice?”

“Oh!  God no!  It’s just some boring, ugly, mini van.”

“Then why did you say I should see it?”

“… ‘cause when you’re all bloody from a fight, you always say that.  ‘You should see the other guy.’ – Like they got hurt a lot more than you …except they only had the mirror knocked off their car, with my face.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Alright, let’s just not worry about that now.”

I used one of the alcohol pads I had kept that the old woman had been using.  It was still damp (and clean) enough to get some of the drying blood off my lip and around my eye with.

“You want me to drive you to the hospital?”

“Uh, yeah.  But I wanna’ go to the post office to get my package first.”

“In my car?”

“ …I’ll just go by bike.”  – She was e-mailing her mom then so, in a way, it made sense.

15. There was an Indian man in the post office when I got there.  He asked me if I was

alright and I said:  “Oh, I’m fine really, …I just got hit by a car so, yeah, I’m bleeding a bit, but it’s really not so bad.”  The women working there looked at me strangely, but said nothing aside from what they usually say when you go to pick up a package.  After I got it the Indian man stopped me again and said:

“Please, I think you should go to the hospital.”

“Oh yeah! I will. I just wanted to get this package first.”

“Tell me what hospital you want.  I can take you in my car now.”

“Oh! Thank-You for that, but I’ll be okay. I’m just going to take this home, then I’ll go.”

“You have a way to get there? I can call an ambulance.”

“Oh, no!  My wife’s at home, she can take me.”

“Alright! You have a wife and she can help you!  That is good!  I know it is difficult for foreign people here.  I think we should help each other when we need.”

“I hear that!!!”

+ I thanked him, got on my bike, and carried the box back in the hand with the broken finger because the vibrations from the handlebars hurt that hand, and if you only have one hand on the brakes – it ought to be the one that won’t send you flying over the front wheel.

16.   I got home, put the box down in the entrance and shouted in that I was going to go to the bike shop.  My wife reappeared, put her phone down and said I couldn’t go.

“But it’s going to close in an hour or so, and I want to have it looked at.  It might take him awhile to fix it, so I should bring it in as soon as possible.  They’re closed tomorrow.”

“You can’t get it fixed until the police look at it.”

“…but they looked at it like 2 hours ago.”

“It’s evidence.  You have to keep it this way.”

“Oh.  That makes sense.”

17.   I opened my package while she talked to her mom on the phone.  Then she e-mailed her friend while I put some cookies and insulin in my bag.  Her friend recommended 2 hospitals.  I visited one of them once before.

I showed up 30 minutes early for a 10am appointment (= 9:30) then they called me in to see the doctor at 2pm.  I spent less than 10 minutes with the doctor.  She asked if I was interested in getting an insulin pump.  I said I had been when I showed up.  She said if I wanted to get an insulin pump I would have to be admitted and stay there as an inpatient for at least 2 weeks, but the hospital was busy, so they wouldn’t be able to admit me for at least 4 months. 

“Really?!!! My brother and my aunt both have insulin pumps.  I think my aunt spent a few hours talking to a doctor and they sent her home before lunchtime.” 

“Oh, we could never allow that!  It’s much too dangerous if you don’t have the proper training.”  “Dangerous?!  And keeping a diabetic person waiting 4 hours beyond their appointment/ 2 hours past lunchtime is Not dangerous?!” 

“Sorry about that.  We are busy here.” 

“Well, when you’re keeping people here 2 weeks longer than the few hours it takes a person to master a machine with a single button, you might expect to be busy.” I spent the remainder of the 10 minutes asking how their appointment system could possibly be as F#$ed up as it was. She said they have a ‘system’, and I didn’t ask if all their policies were decided on by the special people’s club.  She asked if there was anything else.  “Goodness no!”  She said she hoped to see me back again in a few months.

I hope to never have to go back to that dreadful place ever again, so we went to the other hospital.

   I spent a lot of time at that other hospital getting wrapped, splinted, x-rayed, scanned, stapled shut, and continuously questioned about how/ when my health insurance would be applied.

They did a scan of my head, which my wife said would probably cost several times my monthly salary.  The doctors seemed glad that my head seemed fine – despite the blood still trickling out.  They made me lie down when they stapled the hole shut which seemed like a bad idea to me without a bunch of plastic wrap stretched all over the top of it.  I don’t know why the doctors didn’t expect a mess; Again, there was blood everywhere!  I asked about my finger before they kicked me out, because they had seemed to have forgotten about it.  “Oh, right!  …Well that’s clearly broken!”  I had gotten both hands – including my broken finger all black with grease while trying to fit my bike chain back on to get home.  It’s hard enough to get black grease off at the best of times, but they only had weak soap and cold water at the hospital that left my hands as black as ever.  Also, my left hand was in a splint for the 6 weeks that followed; I couldn’t wash it.  It remained black and dirty looking for the duration of that time.

As the one doctor finished putting the splint on my hand, the other doctor rechecked my x-rays and asked if a certain portion of my palm didn’t feel odd or hurt at all.  It was stuck in a splint and lots of other things hurt then too, so I didn’t know.  It’s easier to take stock of your injuries when you only have a few of them.  It took me a day or two to realize my nose was broken – for instance. And my elbows still hurt when I set them down on a table (3 months after).  When the splint finally did come off, I was feeling better enough to realize that I shouldn’t have a strange hard lump in only one hand.  It’s stuck that way now though I guess.

18.  We stopped at the police station before stopping for French fries before going home.  I had to show them my “I’m clearly not Japanese like all of you, but I am allowed to be here” card.  The cop who asked me all the questions before looked at it, and asked my wife for her phone number too, because “it would probably be hard for me to understand things – even though my Japanese is pretty good”.  She gave him her cell phone number, then the number where she works, and told him to call her at work because she never answers her own phone when she’s working. I only mention this seemingly mundane detail here now, because he did call her at work about a month later and she went totally fucking crazy!!!

19.  We got home. I pet the cat with one hand and looked in my package.  I finally got the Green Lantern game I had ordered a month before my birthday – which works out to be 2 month’s previous.  I couldn’t try it out for another month though – hand in a splint, can’t press the buttons on the controller and all.

20.  My wife called the dentist and told him she had taken me to the hospital and what sorts of tests they did there.  He told her he wasn’t going to give her his insurance information because he was driving slowly when he hit me – so it surely wasn’t his fault.

21.  He called her the next morning and said that he was completely stopped, and that I rode my bike directly into his motionless parked car, and that he expected me to pay for his car and for everything wrong with me.

I couldn’t remember what actually happened, but I call bullshit on that!!!  It’s really too bad we hadn’t thought to record the conversation from the night before.  A tape of him contradicting himself might have been very useful.  Ugly and boring though it was, he said it was an expensive piece of car.  I don’t know why any of us believe that when he had already proven himself the worst kind of liar.

22.  They traded 3 or 4 phone calls the first few days.  The first time she did it with vigor.  He was a dentist, and she was going to get his money, but his obstinance became quickly apparent, and by the 3^rd call, she was no longer looking forward to it.  I listened in to whatever I could hear – every time they talked, but I patted the cat on the head briefly one of those times, and I looked at some pictures in a magazine another time, so she got really mad at me (for not focusing 100% on doing absolutely nothing while she talked on the phone).

23.  He’d call her at random times to ask (seemingly) random things:

-          “Why was he riding a bike?”,

-          “Was he working that day?”,

-          “What did he put in the message he sent you that day?”

I’d have responded a lot more tersely: “What are you, Fucking… Perry Mason or something?” – you know, …or something.  But he never called or talked to me to make that an issue.  Nor did he ever express any concern for my well being – except for one occasion, the day after he called with another stupid ass question, and my wife made a point to inform him that he had never expressed any concern for me.  He called early the next morning, asked he how I was, then asked:

-          “What percentage of the blame does he think is his?” (before anything could be said of my condition)   “Because we think it’s 90-100% his fault, but maybe I could think it was 70 or 80% his fault if you work with us.”

…Weird weird shit.

My wife got tired of that, and she works long hours besides, so she asked if I thought it would be a good idea to just have her mom talk to that guy.  She’d been calling and asking about it all very frequently ever since that 1^st day, which undoubtedly wore my wife down considerably as well.

Her mom is quite intelligent and well intentioned.  The problem is that she is very very very very determined, and nearly oblivious to outside input.  It seemed like a good idea to let her talk with the dentist a little, and let them get sick of telephoning each other instead.

24.    He called the next morning and said something to the effect of “Holy Goddamn!”   I almost felt sympathy for him at that moment.

I assume she called him frequently, because he stopped calling my wife; Talking to my mother in law about anything you don’t completely agree with her on, would wear anyone down.  The question, as to what should be done, however, was not resolved.

25.    My wife had given the policeman her work number that 1^st night and said he should call her there (back when she thought she was going to be able to get a settlement of some kind from the dentist). 3 weeks later he finally did call (to ask us to please decide what kind of accident it should be filed as).  I don’t see that one polite call from a policeman during business hours need be particularly stressful, unless you’re stockpiling crack and smoking it too.  She, on the other hand, doesn’t deal with stress well at all and threw a goddamn fit!  She spent several hours that night screaming at me and tried repeatedly to throw me out of the house.

(I’m very sorry to say that neither of these things is an uncommon occurrence living with her…)

Her mom called again of course and my wife told her that it wasn’t her fault that I got hit by a car, and that she wasn’t going to help me with anything ever again; This has proven true.  Her mom offered to take her place in doing most of the communications work, but she told her not to because “…he’s been in Japan for more than 10 years” (almost 10) and “ought to be able to do everything for himself, unless he’s stupid”.

Her mom put up a feeble argument, but called me soon after to see if I needed help sorting things out.  I said I would like some help because I can understand many things, but not many technical or legal things, and I don’t speak particularly well or politely.  Her mom said something I couldn’t follow, so I asked my wife what it meant.  She said something I would translate as: “I hope you go to hell you worthless ass.”

26.     Her mom was calling me all the time then.  She is a nice lady, but it can be aggravating.

“Hello.  Hello.  Can you understand me?”

“How are you doing today?  Can you understand me still?”

“How is Rie?  Is she sleeping enough?  Is she eating enough?  You should cook her some fish and some eggs.  She doesn’t need your vegan food.  Tell me when you don’t understand me okay?  Do you understand?”

“Yes I understand you.  I will let you know if I don’t.

“Okay.  I talked to the driver today, do you understand me still?”

….and none of these were short conversations,

…and there were so so many of them.

She called me one day when I was leaving school, and I told her I was just leaving, and she told me that they can fine people for talking while cycling, which I already knew, and I had already stopped my bike by the side of the road.  We talked for 45 minutes.  I could bearly even hear her with all the trucks going by.  She told me to write something down.  I said I couldn’t as I didn’t have any paper.

“Get a piece of paper then.”

“I can’t just get a piece of paper, I’m standing on the side of the road.”

“Why are you standing on the side of the road?”

“Because you called when I was just leaving.  I’m not supposed to talk while riding a bike, and I didn’t know how long you were going to talk for.  You didn’t hear all the trucks all this time?”

“I thought you were doing something.”

“No, I’m just standing on the side of the road.”

“Well, don’t ride your bike while talking!  They can fine people for telephoning while cycling..”

“Yes, I know.  You told me that.”

“You should go home.”

“I Agree.”

“Then call me back when you get home.”

“Alright.”

“Be careful while riding your bike.”

“Alright.”

“Then call me back after you get home.”

“Alright.”

“Goodbye.”

“Alright.”

27.   They say there are 3 kinds of accidents.

One is when 2 cars collide, and no one is injured.  This is what the driver insisted it be classified as, despite the fact that I was very clearly injured, and he had no right to insist.

Another kind is when a car hits a person, and that person is injured.

This is the kind I thought it should be classified as, because that’s what f%#ing happened.

The last kind, is when both parties agree that “nothing happened”.

My wife told me about a month afterwards, that when an ambulance is summoned (and no one but me ever refuses an ambulance), it’s automatically classified as the second type, and the police send the driver’s insurance information to the hospital on your behalf.

My mother in law told me about a month and a half later that the police hardly ever involve themselves in anything but the second type. It then stands to reason, through my own experiences and prejudices, that a high and mighty pillar of the community such as a fucking dentist, would want above all other things, to keep his record (and boring ass car) clean of signs of wrongdoing and insist on the 1^st type (i.e. obstinately delaying it being called the 2^{nd type}).

I freely admit that I was going fast.  I would otherwise pride myself on that fact! But  I never thought it was too fast.  I also would have thought twice about going the wrong way down a one way street – had I known it was a wrong way street, and not just followed a car going down in the same direction   Did I, absentmindedly or with mysterious forethought, ride my nice new (very brittle very breakable) carbon racing bike into a parked car full of innocent bystanders?  How fucking stupid can you be?!!!!

Both my wife and mother in law told me that my own health insurance would be refused by the hospital, because health insurance in Japan won’t cover any accidents involving other parties.  As a person who has a lot of accidents, I was surprised to hear this.

As the injured party/ on the lighter vehicle I was able to decide definitively which kind of accident it would be labeled as, but the police expect a reasonable effort be made by both parties to reach a consensus.  I wasn’t going to agree to pay several thousand dollars to fix his ugly ass van, and get no support for my hospital bills, and he was a dick

(to put it simply).

28.  My mother in law decided one Friday to come visit us the next day.  We’ve been here nearly a year, and she had never come to visit before.  I gave the house a good cleaning.  She arrived, we had lunch, and drove up to show her where I got hit.  A guy at a pay parking lot convinced my wife and mother in law to park in his lot even though I told them there was a free parking lot closer to where I got hit – further up the hill.  After walking uphill for 40 minutes they were both grumbling about the walking and I said again that there was a free parking lot a lot closer to where I was hit.

“Why didn’t you say that before we parked?”

“I did say that!  I said it 3 times then!  This is the 4^th time I’ve told you!”

I guess she was too focused on talking the man down in price to pay much heed to me.

She had been to talk to a lawyer who, she claims, told her that traffic laws had come to be interpreted differently of late.  He said she should go and see where I was hit.

I found the spot.  The red skid mark my bike’s rear tire made had disappeared at that point, but I showed her where it had been.  I showed her the spray paint circles the one policeman made further down the road, and I wondered again why the driver would say that we crashed there if the skid mark (that grew thicker and ended abruptly) had been significantly higher up the hill (closer to where my memories ended).

I showed her where I was when I first saw the van – way far down the hill.  She decided that if I saw a car anywhere on the road at any point before crashing everything was probably my fault.  Old ladies on bicycles with baskets attached to them do make a point to jump off their bikes and walk, or stand and wait, whenever anything larger than a squirrel approaches them – and this, apparently, is the only way to ride a bicycle safely.  I agree that this is a safe way to ride a bike, and it probably is the safest, because it isn’t actually riding a bike.  A bicycle racer on a racing bike is not an old lady on an old lady bike going to the old lady store.  Bicycles have a right to use the road too.  In fact cars are (were) required to yield to them (until the law came to be interpreted differently, …if that is even true).

It’s a judgment call in each case.  In this case there should have been no danger for me to proceed around the semi-blind corner.  The car was well far away.  It would have had to have been traveling significantly faster than the speed limit to be of any concern to me then. We did not, and do not agree on this/ many other points.

29.   I made spaghetti for dinner while my wife insulted everything I ever do and ever have done (to the best of her ability).  That happens whenever she and her mom get together.  It’s never ever accurate and that bothers me a lot more than the malicious intent.

After eating she sat and watched TV and made more snide remarks while her mom spent 3 or 4 hours explaining what different road signs in Japan mean (I didn’t know it was a one way road) and how to ride a bicycle safely (don’t ride a bike if you want to be safe is what it comes to with her).

30.     Her mom woke up at that time of day that only the elderly can manage.  She worked silently through the still of the morning reorganizing everything.  It was a nice gesture I suppose, but I would have liked it better if she hadn’t done it, or if she had at least asked.  We’re still finding things we thought had vanished.

She pulled all the weeds out of the front corner of our property, which I had tried to do, but had had considerable difficulty with only one hand not wrapped in a bandage.  I had done better stretching and tying a tarp up to use as a bike shelter.  She saw this and decided we would use that extra space to keep our recycling.  It was a pretty good idea I think, except that it’s not terribly convenient to have to go outside and around the corner of the house to throw out a can, a bottle, or a piece of plastic.  I was planning to use that extra space for an extra bike someday, and I never asked her opinion on recycling or space management.  She also took me around to the back of the house and showed me how she had pulled everything out of the garden.  She said that none of my 12 pumpkin plants were ever going to grow any good pumpkins, and we wouldn’t get many cucumbers or goya off of our green curtain either.  I suppose she would know better than me, but I didn’t spend hours making a trellis out of bamboo branches and twine because I wanted to look at a bare net for the next year.  I, for one, prefer a garden with some green in it to a bare patch of dirt and rocks.

31.    My wife made some rice and some stir-fried goya for lunch.  Goya tastes awful, but you do get used to it eventually.  They made me go shopping with them.  I got an assortment of doughnuts for everyone, but they said they didn’t want doughnuts.  (My wife actually said she didn’t want a dessert offered to her!)

They reorganized more things when we got back.  They put all the food in the cupboard in baskets, so now if you want to get food out, you don’t just get the food out, you have to take the basket out first, then take the food out.  (It makes no sense to me.) They made a decent looking table cloth – which covers up a better looking table.  Then they made some rice and stir-fried goya for dinner again.  It didn’t get any better that second time.

32.     My wife watched TV again while her mom explained options and likely outcomes regarding how to classify the accident.

It could have taken an hour, or an hour and a half, but she insisted on repeating the same theory and warning many many many times.  I thought that because she came on a bus from Saitama to help me (while my wife watched TV in the next room), I ought to at least listen to her, despite it being the same thing over and over and over…

After 3 hours or so, she got very frustrated and stood up and said something like:

“…and here I came all this way, and I’m explaining it to him as best I can, and he keeps giving me the same answer.  Do you, or do you not know what this means?”

My wife kept her eyes glued to the TV and said “He doesn’t understand you.  You’re wasting your time.  You shouldn’t have even come to help him.” And that ticked me off somewhat!  I probably didn’t know what each and every word meant the 1^st four times, but I understood her well enough from the very 1^st.  She and my wife! The same thing, repeated continuously the same way, and they expect they’ll get different results.

Then I had to explain that when I said I wanted to take a certain approach, it was because I wanted to take that approach.  And when I said that I understood that I might have to pay a lot of money if it didn’t turn out well for me, it was because I understood that I might have to pay a lot of money if it didn’t turn out well for me.

“Oh, so that’s what you meant when you said exactly what you meant?”

“Imagine that.”

I guess my wife had been telling her again how I don’t make a lot of money (even though I do make a reasonable amount/ more than a great many people who work harder than I/ more than her poor mother ever did on her own with 2 children/ even if it is less than my wife makes).  My wife’s mother probably incorporated my wife’s distorted fantasies into her understanding of the situation, rather than listen to what I said for myself, just like she assumed that the dentist driving the van was hardly if at all at fault for knocking me off my bike onto some rocks, because that’s what he told everyone most of the time.

33.    That next morning/ Monday morning, my wife’s mom went to the hospital I had been going to – to check with the doctor I had seen, to see how well or badly my finger might turn out.  The doctor had told me the last time that I went that the bones weren’t lined up ideally and that there was some chance I might need surgery.  He was smiling when he said it, so I didn’t take it to be of dire concern.  My mother in law did.  I only mentioned it to my wife casually one night, and she let it slip to her mom, who mentioned the importance of clarifying everything beyond clear every time she called me (2 or 3 times a day for a week).

She’s a determined woman, who was able to get my medical information released to her – despite there being some law or legal precedent to prevent it.  What she found out was exactly what I had been telling her for that whole week; ‘There’s a chance it might need surgery, but it’s not an overwhelming chance, and it’s too soon to tell besides.’

34. That same day/ Monday, I woke up remembering more,  …or let us rather say I woke up realizing more.  I had for several days been having just a brief flash of a memory of navigating around the front of a white car.  I kept telling myself that that was a car I had passed before the accident.  On Monday I woke up early as ever but I was more relaxed because my mother in law calmed my wife down some, and I was happy that my mother in law herself would be headed home soon.  I laid in bed a moment longer and suddenly realized that I could remember passing a white car, and passing a white van.  When I realized that – that flash of a memory was from the accident, the rest of the memories from that second encounter came back and attached together bit by bit.  I must have closed my eyes when the car mirror hit my face, so I can’t say I remember that precise moment, and there’s no way I could remember how my unconscious body hit the rocks (though to hear the dentist’s wife talk that first day, it was something to see).  But by the end of the day I could remember as much as I was able to witness.

I rode my bike to my wife’s pharmacy after school to tell her that I could remember what happened.  She didn’t know what I was talking about at first, so I had to remind her how I had been hit by a car…

“Oh! … … … …You remember that now?  That’s great!  That’s really helpful!”

I wasn’t so sure.  It seems like it would/ should be considered suspect testimony, remembering details that would exonerate you that long after having the memory knocked out of you.  But for my part, I trusted that what I could now remember was what had actually happened, and that is worth something certainly.

Having that much to go on, I was able to find marks on my bicycle which corroborated my recent recollections and put me somewhat more at ease.

This – Finally - is what happened!

I rode my bike up Shosenkyo like I like to do.  It was one of those days in August when more people are off from work.  More people off from work usually translates into more people walking up that narrow pretty river road.  It’s the best road I’ve ever found in these parts, but it often feels like I’m going to have a heart attack riding up those hills with a lot of people around.  They see you on a cool ass racing bike in a spandex suit, and they all talk loudly.  I don’t know what they talk about; I try to go quickly so I don’t hear them.  There are often so many people there that I wind up going uphill too fast for too long.  I don’t know too much about heart rates, but I know I don’t feel too good when my bike computer says I have a heart rate of 189, so I went up the boring road instead.

After an hour and 50 minutes of climbing, I thought I ought to make my way back home.

•        The way I came is safe, wide, and generally free of cars, but it’s boring, I already did it, and I would have to climb another 30 minutes to use that road.

•       There’s another big road that goes down, but there is no shoulder, there are lots of long dark tunnels, and there are lots of cars that don’t slow down for anything.  I think it might be one of the most dangerous roads around.

•        The road that I took, of course, was the pretty one.  The road its self is a bit narrow, but there is adequate room to maneuver around all the families walking there, and cars can pass you safely on several stretches of the road

I went up a small hill past the lake, then started my long decent.  When I passed the art museum, a car pulled out behind me, it followed close behind me for 100 yards, then passed me inside the first tunnel, and slammed on its breaks when we were both exiting.  I followed a reasonable distance behind it through the second tunnel.  It slowed down abruptly again before throwing on a turn signal and turning down the road I was going to take.  It stopped at the stop sign at the end of that road, turned down my road again, and stopped short in the middle of the road.  I stopped behind it, wondering why we were stopped, and if it was going to continue with the erratic speed changes (putting unneeded strain on my muscles and brakes).  I thought it best to get that guy safely behind me until we made it down to the main road.

<I later learned that the sign posted in that spot says no entry between 7am and 5pm.  The car probably stopped to read it.  I didn’t notice the sign because I was concentrating on the car, and I would not have been able to read the sign besides.  It was 4:30pm, a punishable offense to go down during the next 30 minutes, but the car didn’t care, and I didn’t know.>

The car continued on (the wrong way) down the street, and stopped again before a minute had passed.  Some people walking there got to one side.  The car sped up quickly once again and stopped again when another car came from the opposite direction.  While they stopped to decide which one of them would try to squeeze through the tight space available, I rolled around the right side of the car in front of me – through the space on the left side of the white car that had approached.  I remembered this well because I thought myself much safer now that I didn’t have to worry about that car stopping suddenly – throwing me over my handlebars (with too much force on my breaks) or into the back of that car (without enough force on the brakes).

I kept on going downhill, with the car behind me not too far behind.  The road was about a lane and a half wide, so by traveling approximately where the passenger seat of a car would travel, I discouraged it from trying to get in front of me again.  I looked and saw a white van and some kind of black car well far down the road ahead/ of no immediate concern.  I picked out a line ahead of me that would keep me away from the wet part of the road, checked the mirror mounted on the bend for any signs of trouble, looked behind me to make sure the car in back was behaving just as I moved a bit more to the right to take the corner easier.  All of that took 2 or 3 seconds from start to finish.

When I looked up again, the white van that was way far far down the road was a lot closer now.  It must have been going super fast!  I squeezed both my brakes hard, but I know (from past experiences flying over the front wheel) that the rear brake should always be the one with the most force put on it.  It locked up the rear wheel which left a widening red skid mark towards the middle of the road as my front wheel continued to move back closer to the left side of the road.  (Cars and bikes should always be on the left side of the road in Japan.)  There was a quick shock of fear as I thought that I might tip over sideways and skid down the street.  But I let up on the breaks before anything bad could happen, and totally regained all my control and forward momentum.  “I am good!  That could have been dangerous…” I thought.  The white van had slowed down considerably, and I assumed it would have stopped.  There was still a large space between us which I pedaled through.  The bend in the road began to reverse here, so I started to throw my weight left to counterbalance before going right. Then my foot felt pinched and my whole bike shook. The car hit my right foot, my rear derailleur, and rear wheel, sending me more to the left, where all the large pointy boulders were. I threw my weight down and to the right to keep from splattering on the rocks.  I had no room to maneuver and I couldn’t stop both: because there wasn’t time, and because there was no space to put either foot down; I stayed on that bike like I was racing down a balance beam with it.   I seriously had to follow less than a skull’s width from the edge of the road because the van was not on its edge of the road; It was not even in the middle of the road, it was heavy on the opposite side/ my side of the road; It never stopped, and it seemed to have made no attempt to follow the bend in the road!

The last thing I remember was throwing my right shoulder down so it wouldn’t hit the side mirror.  Most cars have their side mirrors at shoulder height, and I was impressed with myself for considering that with so many other immediate concerns.  Of course this was not most cars.  It was a van.  The important difference here is that its mirror was higher.  It knocked me unconscious, broke my nose, cut the inside and outside of my lip, and gave me friction burns, cuts and bruises all around my right eye, before I landed on the rocks .

I never wore a bike helmet before because I don’t think they will save you from dying in a bad crash/ accident. I haven’t changed my mind in that respect, but I did buy one recently because: Temporary amnesia exists, and it’s very inconvenient.

It took some time, but now I knew the truth.  I also had some familiarity with the principles of physics as they apply to riding a bike.  What the driver said had happened couldn’t have happened.  It is not possible, as far as I know, for the rear wheel of a bike to strike a car (while the bike is moving forward in a straight line with both wheels on the ground), unless the bike’s front wheel hits the car first.

The policeman had come to my house to take photos.  He took several of my bike, and one of me holding it with a strange foam hat on I had to use to keep the bandages in place (which I would have liked a copy of).  I thought I could explain what I remember, show them the marks on my rear wheel, the absence of marks on my front wheel, and remind them that a bicycle moving forward will not also move sideways (meaning that: The car hit me, and the 1^st impact was not my fault).  The guy at the bike shop could write a letter stating that my bike didn’t have any of these marks before (he would know having fixed the flat tire not long before).  And my wife could go with me to the station and tell them how the dentist had changed his story while talking to her several times.  (I doubt that would be permitted as evidence in court but it ought to arouse suspicions in the local law constables at the very least.)

I never expected to need to have to do any of that, but I was ready to.  The dentist was not cooperating, the hospital kept inquiring as to when and how they would be paid, and the police were expecting us to finally come to a decision.  The stakes were raised even further when my mother in law explained more about healthcare laws. She told me that there is a law which forces hospitals to charge 2 to 5 times their usual rates for treatment provided with no insurance information on file!!!  She also found out, after some research, that you are legally allowed to use your health insurance for an accident that isn’t your own fault, but it’s frowned upon to such an extent that “most people” go and buy special extra coverage.  I never knew any of that before, and it was too late to do me any good so, my mother in law convinced my wife to help me a little more.  She wrote some speech for my wife to use to call the president of her company to tell him as politely as possible that I would be using the health insurance I get through them to help pay my hospital bills if the police don’t give us the driver’s information.  Apparently saying or doing something like that might throw her in a negative light with her company, possibly even get her fired.  I detected more than a hint of melodrama when this point was raised.  It seems her company president didn’t really give a shit about it either way though; It wasn’t his money, and with an insurance company involved, it wouldn’t be much money.

She called the police that evening and told them that it would be the type of accident where I got hit by a car (which is what it was and had never changed).  She also called the dentist to inform him that, as the social code dictates.  He didn’t sound too happy to hear it, but seriously WTF would any reasonable person expect at that point?!!

35. Simple is right.  Right is easy.  But nothing can ever work out simply, easily, or the right way for me these days.  My mother in law called me when I was leaving school again the next day.  All in all, it was very similar to the last time she called me when I was trying to go home, but this time she was out of breath, because she was running.  I had to get off my bike to take her call again, but I walked instead of waiting for 40 minutes like last time.  She said she found out from some cousin she has somewhere that the police might fine me around 50,000 yen for going the wrong way if I go and tell them about the accident.  She also said that she found out from the hospital, that my bill with my own insurance on record would only come to 43,800 yen – so I could save $60 – $70 if I changed the type of accident to “No one’s Fault” and hoped the dentist would agree to those terms.

I didn’t trust the dentist to agree to anything.  I’m not stupid enough to risk him changing his mind again – not when I had evidence in my favor, and I didn’t think the police would force the fine on me.  Changing the accident type then would be a pretty stupid move – giving him what he wants with no way to guarantee he follows through after I squander my last chance to tell my side of the story.  I would, furthermore, be glad to pay a fine if it meant that that stubborn lying asshole also paid a price.  Explaining this to an excited mother in law without a commensurate level of Japanese ability, given her history of disregarding everything I say, simply was not worth the effort.

I didn’t try very hard, but there was another long conversation where I made these points several times and she seemed to take no notice.

“If you call and tell them that you want it to be classified as a certain kind of accident, they have to listen to you, and not your wife.  So even if she reported it as one type, you can still change it”

“But I want it to be the type she told them I want it to be.”

“But you might have to pay a fine, and it might be 50,000 yen.”

“I might have to, but I doubt it, and even if I did, it’s better than hoping the dentist agrees to your idea – which isn’t much less money.”

“It’s a chance you have to take if you want to save money.”

“I’d rather take my chances on maybe having to pay a fine.”

“Really?! If you really think that, then there’s no need for me to be running home to get the number for the police station for you.”

“There’s no need for you to run and do that.”

“You don’t want to save money.”

“Hey, I like to save money, I’d just rather gamble money on a reasonable police officer than that guy who can’t operate a car, or remember things consistently.”

“Alright, well, I’m home now, I’ll give you the number for the police station.  Call them before 5pm.  That’s when they close! 5pm!”

I pretended to write the number down.  I hate telephones – especially in a foreign language over detailed matters, and I wasn’t going to call besides.

She called me again 40 minutes later and asked if I called.  She told me I should go to the police station the next morning before school and beg them to change the type of accident.  I didn’t bother to repeat all the reasons she didn’t listen to before.  I told her I didn’t have time, + how my company could fine me $20,000 for showing up late to work.  I figured 2 more days of this crap and I would have made my statement to the police and it would all be finally settled.

36. So it turns out that while they were talking for hours that night, my mother in law convinced my wife to show up to her job late, to go plead with the police to let me change the type of accident, even though I didn’t want to.  She didn’t go there secretly and do it behind my back or anything, I aquiesced.

Her mom dictated some letter she got from someone else she knows, and my wife copied it.  It said I’d pay for my own bills and repairs, they would do the same, and nobody would sue anybody else.  I agreed to that because the dentist seemed litigious.  I think I had the facts on my side, but I also think he could draw on his van full of “witnesses” to corroborate any story he wanted to invent.  Nor do I place much faith in a legal system that grants foreign residents no legal rights to land they buy or inherit, or children they have conceived.  I also told the people in the van that they could just leave after they woke me up and I saw my bike was alright (rule #5), so it seemed to come full circle to let it end that way …reluctantly

I worry about my bike now though -my precious fast brittle carbon bicycle frame will not last forever.  Carbon wears down in time.  Hopefully I won’t be in traffic or going too fast when mine suddenly breaks down under me.  There is a much greater risk of that happening much sooner now since  it suffered that impact with the car and the ground where it landed.

メリーゴーランドが決裂したときに、その無精ひげを生やした顔の反則の霊感の私はパパと呼ばれるを老人は、どこでしたか？

37.   My wife was going to go to Saitama that coming weekend for a friend’s wedding.  I had entertained the thought of going to Saitama with her, but after I got hit by the car and spent hours talking on the phone with her mom every day, I thought I could do with some small measure of respite instead.  We went to her mom’s house 3 weeks before, and her mom had just left our house this week.  Who feels a need to spend 3 weekends with their mother in law? – It ain’t me.
There was also a typhoon warning in effect that entire weekend, and I thought it would be better spent finishing up 2 other paintings I was asked to do, but my wife said she would not help me fill in my insurance papers unless I went with her to visit her mom again.  She acted like I was breaking some sacred vow for not wanting to waste another weekend sitting around with her mom, and tried to throw me out of the house again
  (I only just finished those 2 paintings yesterday.  If I had had an extra rainy windy weekend at my disposal before, I could be sure that they would be dry in time for my trip to America next month.  If they don’t dry a lot in 32 days I’ll have to spend a hundred odd dollars to ship them in a large box overseas when they do dry.)
I went, …very reluctantly.  I made sure to bring our cat with us, so I could have at least one warm body along that wasn’t going to give me a constant hard time.  He’s a nice kitty.
Her mom dropped us off at the train station the next day.  I figured I could finally buy some soy ham in Tokyo, and use the art store certificates that no art store anywhere else accepts, like I wanted to do the last time we were in the area.  I still had 3 months to use my art store gift money things, but the lady at the giant art store I found in Tokyo said that the company that made them had gone out of business a few months earlier.  She said I could exchange my now doubly useless certificates for shares of stock in the bankrupt company.  I would have even done that too, if I didn’t finally lose the certificates after 5 years of walking around with them in my bag.  The vegetarian buffet I used to go to buy the soy ham was also gone.  They did away with the buffet aspect, and most of their customers by the looks of it, but they still had big frozen faux ham style soy.
I wasted what time I could in Tokyo before I got sick of it and headed back to my mother in law’s – 3 or 4 hours I think it was.
She made stir-fried goya and rice for dinner again, which surprised me, because it’s all I seem to be eating these days.  After dinner she and my wife did most of the insurance paperwork, telling me to sign or date something here and there.  I did the part where you explain the accident in pencil, like I was told to.  My wife went to take a long bath before my mother in law looked it over.  We had to wait until my wife was out of the bath, back in her pajamas, and cleaning her ears at the table before the point settled in.  It took maybe 45 minutes.
“I remember what happened now, and this is what happened.”
“No his car should be on his side of the road, and you should draw it so that you’re driving your bike into his car.”
“That isn’t what happened!  It happened just like I drew it here.  He was on my side of the street and he hit me!”
“That isn’t how it happened though.  You should draw it better.”
“I drew it like I remember it happening.  I went down the street, saw him, slowed down a little, started to turn here, but he was way over on my side of the road.  He hit me and I hit his car trying not to crash into the rocks.”
“But he said that you hit him.”
“I know he said that.  He said he was moving, and that he wasn’t moving, but he really was moving.  I remember being hit.”
“What?  You remember what happened now?”
“Yeah.  I’ve remembered since you left this past Monday.  I said that!”
“Rie, did you know he remembered?
–“Huh? …Oh yeah. … …He remembered.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
–“I thought I did.”
“That would have changed everything.  You should have gone to the police.”
“That’s what I said.  That’s what I wanted to do.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you remembered?”
“I did!!! And I’ve been telling you for the past 45 minutes with a diagram besides;  I don’t know how I’d do it any better over the phone.  You just don’t seem to think I know what I’m talking about.”
“That would have changed everything”
“I know!  I said that!”
“Ahhh. <look of disappointment>
–“Can’t be helped now” – cleaning her ears <look of indifference>

The highway we always travel by was shut down due to the typhoon most of the way back to our house, so what should have been a 2 hour ride back, took about 5 hours.  I just wanted to stay home and paint those 2 pictures in peace.

38.  It took a month and a half to get my finger out of the cast, and the doctor said I should watch it carefully for a few weeks more.

     I got out and on my racing bike again as soon as I was able.  It felt nice for the first minute of any outing, but then I found I was afraid.  Afraid it would suddenly break apart, or the wheel might come loose coming around a corner.  I hadn’t ridden it for almost 2 months, so the rubber on the brakes had gotten hard and squeaky.  That’s a lot more vibration than you’d think when you just want to slow down.  The guy at the bike shop filed the brakes down for me while he asked me about American bacon (I’m not the person to ask really).  The rest of my concerns were probably due to the new tires I had had put on while waiting ’til I could use it again. They’re slippier than the set I had on when I got hit.

   The bike’s broken now though I’m afraid.  The impact of the car on my right pedal arm must have caused the left arm to come a little loose, + all the threading stripped off as I rode it in between bouts of re-tightening it.

   I was 6 killometers from home one day (with no money again) when my foot suddenly came loose from the bike with the left pedal + arm still attached to it.   I couldn’t walk in bike shoes any better than the last time I had a problem, so I had to take my shoes and socks off, and walk back home barefoot down the bypass and through the park.  People in cars smile at the sight of a bald barefoot foreign man in a spandex suit pushing a nice bike down the road in the gathering rain.  F#$!  I’d laugh at that!