On Toilet Honda

Well, I promised that I would post my version of the story, but I really don’t want to think about it anymore. Actually, that’s not true, I think about it a lot, so I guess this doesn’t really make that big a difference….
[I'm sorry this is so long. You don't have to read it. Really]

So Jen Em and I went to the multi-purpose store to buy modeling clay for the art lesson at the international school. This was no easy task, since when you can’t read the packages, modeling clay and clay that has to bake in a kiln look suspiciously similar. I tried taking pictures with my cellphone of packages of clay that I thought were modeling clay and sending these pictures to Mike at the university on his cellphone (so he could tell me what the labels said), but the camera/screen resolution wasn’t quite good enough for that.

So finally I had to flag down a store employee and hand her the cellphone and have her listen while Mike explained what I needed. Talk about humiliating. But she was very nice, and totally helped me out – despite the fact that it is pretty weird to have someone hand you a cellphone while saying “My husband has a question for you.”

Anyway, so that hurdle over with, we returned to the car in the parking lot. In Japan, almost everyone (that is, all the Japanese) backs into parking spaces. This is not the law, just convention. Once I found out it wasn’t the law, though, I quickly started pulling into parking spaces the “normal” way. This mean that my (driver’s side) door opens into the driver’s side door of a backed-in Japanese parker.

So as we are getting into the car (school is about 20 minutes away, and the lesson begins in 40 minutes, but we had a little prep to do), this guy sitting in the next car over starts making all these faces and gestures, indicating that my door had bumped his car door. I really, really don’t think I did. But, even if I did, there was no mark whatsoever.

So I make the apology nod, and start to back our car up. At which point this guy lurches his car forward as if to hit us. So, Jen is like, “Okay. We have to stop.” So I stop the car in the middle of the parking lot aisle, get out, and go to apologize.

My vocabulary is really limited, so all I can say is “Excuse me, I’m sorry. I don’t understand” I can’t say, “Buzz off, loser, your car looks fine, there’s no mark, so what are you so upset about anyway?” The guy is yelling at me, angrily, and I understand nothing. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and we have to get to school.

So I go and get my cellphone and call Mike and explain that this guy thinks my door hit his car, but it didn’t, there’s no mark, and I have to go to school. Mike first tells me just to drive away, but I tell him that when we tried that, the guy tried to hit us with his car. So then Mike says, “let me talk to him.” I go back and implore the guy to take the phone, proffering it while saying “husband, husband.” The guy is screaming at me to get me husband to come there—I understand that much, but keep acting like I don’t understand that, because, really, the university is like 10 miles away and all Mike has is his bike. And, oh, yeah, I am supposed to start teaching in 30 minutes.

Several passersby noticed this, but none stopped [and I really think, when I think back on this, that it is the failure of others to come to my aid that disturbs me more than one crazy person]. I asked one man if he spoke English, but the driver of the other car just told him to leave, that things were okay (like, they were so obviously not okay), and the man just left. How could he have just left?

Finally the guy takes the phone, screams at Mike, hangs up the phone, and won’t give it back. So I figure that two can play this game, and I get the camera from my purse and start taking pictures of the alleged damaged door.
This enrages the guy even more. Meanwhile, the phone keeps ringing as Mike is trying to call back, but the guy won’t answer it and is alternately hiding it in his bag and making threatening motions as if he will break it.

At this point, I really start to lose it and start to cry.

So Jen gets out of the car, hauls on over to the guy, and uses her best angry-teacher voice and is like, “Give her back her phone. NOW.” And the guy keeps making the breaking motion (and the phone is still ringing with Mike on the other end). Then the guy makes it understood that it will cost us about ten dollars to get the phone back. He also keeps repeating the word “police.”

Finally, Jen is like, “That’s right. Police.” So she sends me to go get the police. I find a young-ish woman getting out of her car nearby and I ask her if she speaks English. She does, a little. But, of course, I am no state to make my problem comprehensible to her, since I am all shaken up and crying. So finally I just ask her where the nearest policebox is.

Just as she starts to tell me, I see that Jen has my phone back (minus the charm, which he ripped off it) and the guy is peeling out of the parking lot. Only afterwards do I learn that this is after he shoved her and threatened to hit her with his car.

So we tell Mike we are okay. We talk about calling the police, but we only have a part of his license plate, and, moreover, what would we tell the police anyway? So we get in our car and drive to the school, all the while watching through the rearview mirror for him. We arrive at school in time to do some prep, and Jen teaches a fantastic lesson.

***
I am honestly not sure what happened. Did we walk into a scam (Did he pick me because I had parked the car anomalously? Does it mean something that he was in the car when we arrived? That he kept gesturing me to pull the car back into the parking space, thus to stop drawing attention to myself?) or was he just a really angry person? Or both? Not sure.

Also, I guess I worry that this doesn’t seem as scary in the re-telling as it was in the experiencing. And, thus, that I look like a lame foreigner. Oh well. It was scary. I felt so helpless and unfairly targeted (since there really was no mark on his car).

The ultimate result of this is that I feel way less safe here than I used to. I am acutely aware of how much I cannot say or make understood. I also fear that I’ll turn some corner here in Tsukuba and just see him there. So I don’t love going out of the house alone, and I’ve totally given up driving alone.

The last is a real bummer for Mike, since I was just starting to drive alone, and had just learned how to go to the airport by myself to retrieve guests (a four-hour round-trip). I feel guilty that I am now less independent, that I will no longer do things that could allow Mike more time to focus on his research. But, at the same time, I am really worried that this could happen again. I mean, I know that it probably won’t, but at the same time, I’d rather not trust probabilities.

And I can accept that this guy was crazy—there are crazy people everywhere—but I have more trouble with the fact that things were obviously wrong, and people just walked by and left me to work it out with the crazy person all by myself. No one really stopped to help me at all. I think what I struggle with is why/how all those people walking by could just keep walking. This makes me feel like I can’t really trust any strangers to help me out the next time I am lost or confused. Which, is, well, constantly here.