Level Crossings

On Monday I had a dice with death. That is not to say I almost died, but rather I diced with death in the same pedestrian matter one risks their very lives whenever they cook with a frypan filled with oil, or eats with a bluntened dessert spoon; both being deadly weapons in the right hands. My death dicing began with a bus.

I’d managed to miss the particular bus I take to night school and as such would miss the connecting train down the hill. By the time the next bus turned up, I was hopping from foot to foot in frustration and looking at my watch at regular intervals, not so much to check the time, or out of any desire to confirm that it was actually fifteen seconds since I’d last looked, but more out of sheer force of nervous habit.

The bus turned up and we got down most of the hill in record time, before being stuck at the level crossing and having to wait for a train to pass. Through some truly monumental clusterfuck of urban planning, this particular level crossing opens onto a two way, single lane road. In order to cross the tracks you need to be sure the street to your left, on the far side of the crossing, is clear for about 50 metres before you pull out, or you’ll be left face to face with another car, the crossing behind you, and absolutely no room to manoeuvre.

As there was a backup of traffic waiting to cross, when the gates came up we were forced to wait for the traffic on the far side to clear sufficiently to allow us across. The bus driver spotted a gap and gunned the engine, but just as he did so, the bells on the crossing begin to ring again and we’re back to waiting. The driver whistles through his teeth and slaps the wheel in frustration.

A train empty bar a trio of men in yellow hard-hats and grubby baby-blue overalls trundles past on the way to the depot. This time, as the gates come up, the side road is mercifully clear except for one car that has stopped in the middle of the road and appears to be dropping someone off. The driver glares at the car and reaches for the horn, but before he beeps the car begins to move again.

Assuming the driver is not completely retarded (always a risky proposition in Japan as the driving here seems to be a continuous ballet of synchronised near crashes; where everyone is so unaware of other traffic the whole system is only held together by the bus and truck drivers, who deftly manoeuvre their huge vehicles around tiny cramped streets with practiced ease, keeping the cars in check) our bus driver pulls forward onto the crossing. The problem is the other car has now stopped directly blocking our way off the crossing.

And the bells are ringing again.

Our driver frantically tries to calculate an angle that will let him get the bus off the crossing and into the side street without going directly through the car blocking our way. He starts yelling through the window in coarse Japanese that I’ve never heard before. The woman in the other car shuffles forward about 50cm which does sweet fuck all to help our driver, who is becoming increasingly frantic and still doesn’t have an angle that will get him off the crossing.

There is a dual “BOOM-THUNK” as the boom-gate hits roof of the bus and bounces backwards, and the driver accelerates forward, shunting the offending car out of the way. He swears all the way to the station, then realises he’s still got four passengers on his bus. In super polite Japanese he announces, “This is the final stop, please take care when you’re getting off.”

I want to slap him on the back and buy him a beer, but I need to run for my train. I wonder if he had to go back and report ramming another car to the police. I hope not, because the other driver bloody well deserved it.

Posted in Mwah on Wednesday January 18, 2006.