Kuruma, pt. 1

Kristin picked a really good title for our blog. My feelings about this place change constantly. More often than not, these changes have to do with my car. More specifically, with driving on this island. As many of you know, I am frequently running late, no matter where I am going. Okinawa is not the place for this. Most major roads here only have two lanes in either direction. On route 58, there are areas with three lanes, but that is because 58 goes through Naha, which is the prefectural seat for Okinawa. The rest of the "roads" are basically glorified alleys, criss-crossing the island. On the main roads, there is the occasional right turn lane. These right turn lanes are rare, however, so there are frequently long lines in the right lane, with people waiting to turn, and then people behind them either waiting to turn as well, or waiting to get around them. I've gotten caught in the right lane more than once, because I assumed that the person ahead of me was going straight through the intersection, only to have them flip on their blinker upon reaching the intersection. The left lane is no better. You can't turn left on red here (remember, Japan drives on the left side of the road, so turning left isn't like turning left in America), so there are some lines for that. In addition to all of this, people park on the side of the road here. That doesn't sound like an obstacle, but there are no bike lanes, so the lane pretty much stretches to the curb. This means that you will often see a car with it's hazard lights on, sitting halfway in the lane. All this business adds up to frequent slaloming back and forth between the two lanes. I took to this pretty quickly, but now my left blinker is out. It is much more difficult to get into the right lane when no one behind you knows you want to get over.
Another thing about driving here is that there are no street names. Apparently, Bono was talking about Okinawa when he wrote "Where the Streets Have No Names". Sure, many of these roads have numbers assigned to them, but those are only marginally helpful, since the numbers change without notice, the road numbers change direction frequently, and most Okinawans don't know the numbers of the roads. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, I teach classes in Naha. To drive there, I make a total of two turns, but end up driving on four different road numbers. Two of those are before I have made my first turn! Getting or giving directions requires many many points of reference, somewhat similar to getting directions in a rural, backwoods area. "Keep going straight until you see a Lawson (one of the many, many convenience stores, or "konbini", in Japan. Another popular one is Family Mart. What cruel irony that two stores that are everywhere are so difficult for the local populace to pronounce...), then turn right, and you will see a noodle restaurant 500m past that." The problem is, there are convenience stores all over the place! Finding the correct landmark is key to finding your way here. Only yesterday did I learn the name of the rehabilitation school next to where we live, hopefully making direction giving a bit easier.
I mentioned that the smaller roads criss-cross the island. That may be a bit of a simplification. They criss-cross, wind, and double-back on each other. All the roads do that here. It's a little like driving in south county, only instead of getting confused by all the planned communities that look alike, you get confused by all the buildings and shops that look alike. Grids, though perhaps boring, are a very useful aspect of urban planning, and I sometimes miss them. They make stoplight placement much easier. I have still not figured out what system, if any, is used when deciding where to place stoplights here. While driving on the 331, which is the road Kristin and I live next to, I hit maybe five stoplights before reaching the first major intersection. Some of them are as close as 50 meters from each other. I think of that stretch of road as "mini-Warner", because I hit all the red lights, just like I did on Warner when we lived in Huntington Beach.
This might seem like a very negative post, and I apologize for that. I've made my peace with the roads here. I have yelled and screamed in the comfort of my car on many occasions, trying desperately to find the location of an interview, restaurant, or classroom. Repeated calls to the same place, asking for more specific directions, have been made. However, I realize that this island is not going to change, and that I have to. This will be a good thing for me, because it will help me to leave myself more than the necessary amount of time to get places.
Stay tuned to this blog for more entries on the subject of driving, including a much more positive one, very soon.....

PS-"Keruma" is Japanese for "car".