journal features

cycling through gotanda

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2010.06.15

While cycling to my barber's shop today, I heard the honking of a horn from a car behind me. Looking back I saw a small truck bearing down on me.

Scooting into the lane to the left (despite their being parked cars there), I made way for the driver who for some reason felt it necessary to menace me by veering unnecessarily into my lane. He wasn't avoiding anything, he just wanted to scare me.

Well the problem is that I didn't so much scare as get incensed. I watched for him to get caught up at a light, and zipped up beside him where he was waiting. Rapping on his glass, I motioned for him to lower his glass so we could have a dialogue about his driving. He gave me a smug look and shook his head. I yelled through the glass that I had a right to ride on the road.

Not liking that, he pulled out a small camera and started to take a photo of me. So I gave him a big smile and a wave, and went round the front of his truck to take a photo of his license. He started blasting away on his horn, but I wasn't going anywhere until my iPhone finally got the pic. This pic.

品川４００　て５７−７６

So if you're ever in Tokyo and see a dangerous driver and his license plate is the same, I'll testify on your behalf that the man has a history of aggressive and stupid driving. I don't know if it's a small penis thing, or a hatred of cyclists or gaijin or sunny days, or if maybe he was raised by wolverines. But this guy is a dangerous nut.

Three good things that happened today:

1. I was not killed

2. I did not get into a violent situation

3. The rest of my day went very well indeed

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)