Japanese Driving Test II: Before the Law

I had a dispassionate conversation today with my wife after visiting the Fukushima License Center about how she thinks all the problems I seem to come across here in Japan are directly caused by my confrontational, stubborn, and uncompromising personality.  I can't deny that she's right.  I have an abject and probably unfounded hatred for nearly all public employees, and take great offense when I am forced to do something which I find illogical and pointless.  I am absurdly cheap and miserly, and hate being forced to spend money on meaningless fees.  I don't object to the concept of paying taxes, because the government needs money to function, and we the people need some form of government, but the underhanded way in which all governments structure their revenue sources to fool consumers into thinking they pay less than they actually do is odious and criminal, especially coming from the people whose job it is to serve us.

Public employees who don't do everything in their power to slavishly serve the public are the worst kind of people alive.  Among them, those who think of themselves as the masters of the citizenry, and not as the servants of the people, should be publicly executed.  There is a substantial presence of police officers in this last, ninth-circle-of-hell group.      

Those who have read my long series of emails loosely titled "The Chronicles of Carrnia", written four years ago largely from friends's computers, an intermittently functioning seven-year-old laptop, hi-jacked wireless networks, and myriad internet cafes in two continents, may recognize a return to form in the following post of a family-less, responsibility-less, unworking, unshowered Chris filled with anger and hatred for all the unfair aspects of life and unable to control it.  That Chris has since been self-neutered, and he has been replaced with a Chris who tries to explore the world and write dispassionately with his head.  He is still filled with anger and hatred for all the unfair aspects of life, but at least makes an effort to control and direct it, to be angry in a civilized fashion.

I've wondered occasionally whether this gradual change in both my personality and in my writing over the past several years represents a process of maturity which we all go through or a selling out to the pressures of the world and obligations to those around me.  After my recent experience trying to exchange my American drivers license for a Japanese one, in which I discovered no matter how much I try to hide my anger and frustration, it doesn't matter, I've decided to channel that old Chris for a profanity filled, angry rant about something that deserves it.  So, if you dislike profanity, and if you dislike anger, stop reading now.  But if you like profanity and anger in its proper place like I do, then by all means continue reading.

And so, when I was forced by the Fates to undertake the infamous Japanese driving test, I knew it would require tremendous self-discipline and anger management to successfully pass.  First, let me describe the situation for Americans living in Japan, a situation which most foreigners here don't fully understand, and about which Americans in the United States remain apathetically oblivious.  This situation is indicative of a larger trend worldwide wherein American citizens are especially singled-out for abuse as retaliation to the actions of our retarded government. 

Sometime back in the day, some idiot American bureaucrats trying to justify their existences decided they didn't like the way the Japanese taught their citizens to drive, and so Japanese citizens would no longer be fast-tracked to receive American licenses upon relocation to the United States.  Japan responded eye-for-an-eye by making it especially difficult for American Citizens to pass the Japanese test in order to gain permission to drive in Japan. Essentially, the current situation is two governments being babies and citizens having to clean up the shit.

I initially made a driving test reservation for three Tuesdays ago, but came down with a crippling fever and splitting headache which resulted in my cancelling my reservation.  When my wife called the license center to cancel my appointment, those arrogant fuckers got pissed off at her for failing to properly instruct her pet gaijin on the proper Japanese ways, even though the license center assholes set aside a block of time everyday for hassling foreigners and it doesn't matter how many show up.  How dare I get sick. 

So when I rescheduled for the following Thursday, the license people were less than cordial, by which I mean they were rude fucks that deserve death.  Of course I had to ride my bike - since I'm not allowed to drive - to get to the license center, which is the only one in the prefecture, and is conveniently situated at the base of a huge mountain nowhere near any non-pork civilization.  There were of course several establishments in the vicinity, such as a place to take license photos, a convenience store with an ATM for conveniently withdrawing license fees, and several driving schools whose very existence derived from the montrous table scraps of the Japanese government, table scraps so large they're considered their own political demographic which politicians try to sex up for votes.  This pork-microeconomy was surrounded on all sides by the vast peach farms, vinyards, and rice fields which mark the corner of Japan in which I am a humble guest. 

I'm extraordinarily lucky I live at the base of those very same mountains, but even so, it took me 45 minutes to bike to the license center uphill the whole way, and I barely made my ten o'clock appointment, but I made it.  I entered the large cathedral-like main room of the prodigiously expensive public building in the middle of nowhere and approached the nearest window, where I was made to wait like an idiot for fifteen minutes or so even though no other customers were there and there were twenty or so fat, semi-retired police officers sitting at their desks doing nothing before one of the fat pigs finally waddled over to talk to me.  I was informed that my window was actually on the third floor, and was directed to the elevator on the far side of the room. 

For some reason, the elevator smelled like stuffing of the Thanksgiving variety which actually made me feel sick because it was a hundred degrees out and I was still dripping in sweat from my uphill bike ride, and no one wants to smell Thanksgiving stuffing under those circumstances.  When I got to the third floor and approached my proper window, I was informed in extremely rude Japanese by a disgusting-looking angry old bitch that it was past 10:00 and I should "go home" because I had missed my 10:00 appointment (It was 10:05.); I was given a form in Japanese to fill out with details of how I had acquired my Massachusetts license more than ten years before: how many hours had I practiced driving before my license test, how many questions were on the permit test and which percentage one needed correct to pass.  I knew if I made any mistakes here, it could be used later as pretext to fail me once or reject me altogether for fraud if I didn't "play ball"with the system, and so I had researched the Commonwealth's standards circa the year 2000 on the Internet and bullshitted the rest, because that's all you can do. 

I had a few questions about some technical words on the form I'd never seen before; I could guess their meanings and answer according to my best guess, or I could double-check with an employee first.  I decided to play it safe and ask old bitch, who seemed to hate her job dealing with gaijin.  Before I could finish my question, she smirked, "If you don't understand Japanese, just go home."  "But I'm asking you in Japanese." I replied taken-aback, "I'm just trying to doublecheck what this one word means."  "Don't make make me move my neck for you!  Go home, and come back tomorrow with a Japanese translator."

Comments

[James]

Ouch! I've heard of some heavy-handed civil servants, and indeed, I've seen a few at the police station when my wife changed the address on her license, but the one at the end of your post is unbelievably rude... I look forward to the next part.