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| My First Rant! I must be getting used to this country... |
| 06.08.04 (5:16 am) [edit] |
So far, I`ve been pretty laid-back about some of the differences between Japan and North America. I`ve accepted most of them with interest, some with humour, but rarely have I gotten actually irritated.
However, there is something that is driving me insane about this country. How to explain...
On our first day of training, someone remarked that pedestrians rarely, if ever, seem to jaywalk. One of our instructors replied that `They patrole themselves.` This is indeed correct - for no matter how nonexistant the traffic, no matter how short the distance...[b]pedestrians will not break the law to jaywalk[/b]. Indeed, if we foreigners do so, we are sometimes met with calls of `Bacca gaijin!` (`Stupid foreigner!`).
Now, many would comment that this isn`t really an annoyance of the country. Indeed, it is quite a testament to the level of lawfulness present; most people aren`t willing to break the law as far as crossing a street, let alone stealing a car. But this ties in to my main irritation here:
Ambulances.
That is, the fact that ambulances will not break the speed limit. They don`t. I`m not exaggerating - it`s fact, and at least two of my instructors mentioned it in training, aside from what I`ve seen. [i]Ambulances do not speed.[/i]
I don`t know why I didn`t blog it before, but the night of our last training session (a week ago last Saturday), a group of us went out partying in Nagoya. About 1am, we were standing outside a Yoshinoya place (fast food noodle joint), and I noticed a guy dragging another guy from the street. Little odd, thought I, so I went over to check. Turns out that a motorcyclist had hit a pedestrian. The motorcyclist was standing over the hurt guy talking on his cell phone, and looking stunned, so I ran back and grabbed my fellow gaijin (who actually knew some Japanese, and First Aid to boot - which brings up another point told to us in our Safety Course we had to take during training: people in Japan just generally don`t know First Aid. I`m not being discriminatory; this is what my instructor told us, including, and I quote, `Anybody who`s seen a full season of E.R. knows more First Aid than most people here, so help out whenever possible.` But I digress.). The guy wasn`t hurt seriously - probably a concussion, though he was unconscious when we found him - and the guy on the motorcycle was on the phone to the ambulance. So we waited, while Rachel and Mike checked the guy for signs of major trauma and injury, and tried to get him to say something.
And we waited.
And we waited.
By my watch, it was [i]at least [/i]15 minutes before an ambulance arrived, and I would estimate at it being closer to 20 (I only started keeping track of the time after what I thought an unreasonable ambulance response time had passed). Now, this is not some out-of-the way area - this is Sakae, an area of downtown Nagoya - the commercial district of the third largest city in Japan. And we waited 20 minutes.
Imagine it taking a quarter of an hour to reach an accident on the corner of Granville and Smythe in Vancouver.
I realize I`m ranting about this, but today, sitting in the rain atop my aforementioned Ugly Old-Fashioned Bike, I heard a siren and watched an ambulance drive down the street. Slowly. Because the speed limit was 50 km/h, and despite the fact that there was almost no other traffic...despite the fact that almost any other drivers, even the law-abiding Japanese drivers, would have driven faster, let alone in an emergency situation...despite that, they would not go any faster. I probably could have biked to the scene faster, for crying out loud.
Phew. That feels better. :lol:
Anyway, teaching went well today. Had a couple of little gremlins who tried to play, `Nail Sen-sai With A Plastic Ball` but I quelled that in a hurry.
And I watched the NHL final in Japanese. Too bad - I was really rooting for Calgary.
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posted by: cheryl (reply)
post date: 06.10.04 (9:23 pm)
camulance! how is you? i have to catch up on everything you're written here, but, i'm just dropping you a line. oh! and i finally started up my website, check me out: http://www.stitchpixie.com
it's nice to hear what's going on in the ever-elusive life of cam
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