Cars, Trucks, and the Morons Who Drive Them: Part 3- Buckling Up

As mentioned in my last letter, Japanese people have strange obsessions. Well, who doesn’t, right? But one thing that Japanese adults do not seem to be concerned with is the safety of their children while driving. Often, when edging along in traffic, stuck somewhere between a high school girl on a moped and a farmer driving in a tiny truck made out of recycled tin cans, I will pass a Japanese family, riding in their minivan, going to or from wherever it is that they spend their time. The parents will be sitting in the front seat, staring ahead with expressionless faces, grandpa will be in the back, trying to sneak a peek at the girl on the moped, and grandma will be readying her backhand, about to swat grandpa. All are oblivious to the fact that the children, sometimes as young as two years old and no bigger than swollen wharf rats, are unbuckled, crawling around the van like monkeys on speed. They are hanging over the seats, dangling from the head-rests, perched on grandma’s hunchback, and pressing their cute little faces against the windows, trying to intimidate strange looking Canadians. I cringe every time I see this. And I see it all of the time.

I can think of nothing more irresponsible than this when it comes to caring for your children. This is a country with highly dangerous, narrow roads (my prefecture being one of the worst), which accommodate much more traffic than they can handle. The drivers are often terrible. There are accidents all of the time. There are no sidewalks, resulting in the cyclists, riding on rickety old hunks of welded steel, cruising down the constricted streets, taking up one third of the lane and requiring drivers to avoid them like the plague. Cars will stop and park on blind corners, perilously blocking the road as if to taunt the drivers behind them, “so, do you feel lucky, punk?” Drivers here in Ibaraki, Japan exhibit less common sense than the parents who were dropping their kids off at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. “Have a good time with Michael, sweetie. Play safe.”

Needless to say, whenever I see unbuckled kids bounding about their parent’s van like it is happy hour at Tokyo Disney, I get a little bit queasy. These parents should just tie steaks around their kids’ necks and let them play beside the lion cage at the Ueno Zoo. If the foolish, catatonic parent driving the minivan so much as tapped the rear end of the tin-can truck in front of him, the kids would slam into the back of the seats like birds into clear glass. Worse yet, the kids will go sailing through the windshield like fuzzy-haired projectiles and land amongst the bags of rice weighing down the back of the now crumpled, shoe-box of a vehicle in front of them. I hate the thought of it. So I cringe- and the mystery meat that I had for school lunch comes dangerously close to making a re-appearance.

While many Japanese parents that I’ve seen driving are not so conscious of the lack of safety of their unbuckled children, the Japanese in general have an outrageous paranoia about crime and their safety from its venomous grip. At times, they seem to have a perception that they are living in a war-zone, claiming that this is ‘such a dangerous place to live.’ Of course, this is absolutely preposterous. Japan is by far the safest country that I have ever visited. Even the drunk guys are more interested in grabbing your crotch than starting a fight. I can leave my Ipod lying on the seat of my car, with the windows down and the doors unlocked, and no one will touch it. Japanese people don’t steal. Because there is such a dominating group mentality, people are more afraid of letting down their fellow group members than of any other possible penalty. Shame is the biggest deterrent. Of course, being ethnocentric and, dare I say, often racist, Japanese people direct most of their blame toward foreigners when it comes to accounting for crime. Unfortunately, their accusations are based in truth. Most of the crime IS committed by foreigners; mostly those from other Asian countries.

Regardless of who is committing the miniscule amount of crime that actually does occur here, the people have no sense of how relatively safe Japan is. “Canada is so safe!” they often exclaim. “You are so lucky!” What I don’t tell them is that if they were to take a stroll through certain sections of Winnipeg, they would likely arrive back home with a new hole in their body and half of the blood that they left with. On the other hand, I could walk down any street in my prefecture, with a bag of gold tied around my waist and a diamond pendant around my neck saying ‘Rob Me’ in glittering letters, and I wouldn’t feel the least bit insecure.

Lately, in my area, I have been told that there has been a rash of crime. I’m not sure what constitutes a crime spree in Japan, but I’m guessing that someone’s potato patch was raided or their cat disappeared (I hate to say it, but I think I saw Fluffy lying in the middle of the road the other day- and she wasn’t doing too well). Being ever-vigilant and highly organized, the teachers at one of my schools have begun to assemble the kids into massive packs at the end of the school day. The kids, who all ride their bicycles to school, are then escorted by a teacher, who will drive ahead, leading them down the road, into the sunset and safely home. At the end of everyday, there is a mass exodus of students from the school; all dressed exactly alike, wearing their blue school uniforms and white bicycle helmets, their flashing bicycle lights permeating the increasing darkness, warding off dangerous outsiders. As they ride, tightly packed together down the road, the students are much more likely to get hurt from crashing into one another than they are from any possible child abductors. But why try to argue with their logic? The pack mentality is alive and well in Japan.

We humans are such contradictory characters; not just the Japanese, but people in general. Living here however, the contradictions that are inherent in the Japanese culture stand out like Jehovah’s Witnesses at a 50 Cent concert. They have an immense phobia of non-existent crime, ever-fearing for their safety, yet, many families allow their kids to pile into the van- the traveling jungle gym on four wheels- and barrel down the dangerous roads, unbuckled. They are completely ignorant of the fact that moving vehicles kill far more people than guns in civilized countries such as this. “Stay away from that dangerous looking Canadian kids! Now everyone pile into the fun-bus! It’s party time!” This is like a meth addict with a fear of flying (but, enough about me), or the father of my host family, who spoke about the dangers of poisonous, chemical-laced Chinese vegetables while sucking back one cigarette after the next. Yes, sometimes we homo-sapiens are just not the rational thinkers that we so arrogantly claim to be. “We’re better than the chimpanzees! Booya!”

As an adult, choosing not to wear your seat belt is your own ill-planned decision. Just don’t subject your kids to such stupidity. The Japanese may make safe and reliable cars, but if you don’t make your kids wear their seat belts, what does it matter? The next time I hear a Japanese person obsessing about crime, or parking, or comic books, or even the size of foreign genitals, I will stop them, look at them inquisitively, and say, “yes, but are your kids buckled up?” Now, obsess about that.