I got hit by a car! Again!

Here we go again: I got hit by a car! Last night on my way to boxing, side-swiped off of my bike. It's not as bad as the last time this all happened, because my bike's OK and I'm okay, but now I have problems from insurance and actively negligent police to deal with(you'd think that "actively negligent" would be an oxymoron, but where cops are concerned I guess any kind of moron is fair game. We're actually lodging a complaint about how they treated us last night, which is a terribly un-Japanese way to do things but it all was so completely atrocious that we're going to go through with it anyway).

There was damage to the car though, and it's all complicated because the driver turns out to be a mom at one of my schools; after the crash, one my little kids jumps out of the car hollering "Josh sensei! Josh sensei!" Actually the kids were totally awesome about it all and were a big help in telling the cops how they had got it all backwards. I was coming down a hill/exit-ramp kind of place below Tamagawa's community center after eikaiwa class and a car came turning up into the same ramp. The ramp's narrow and windy and cars can't really stay in lane, and even though I moved over to the shoulder and slowed down, the driver didn't see me and cut the turn much too sharp and swiped me. I had been on the left side of the road coming down the hill and the car cut in too close to its right coming up (remember wedriveon the left here too). Its right side fender smashed into me as I tried to break and swerve out of the way; it didn't help any that this had been a rainy, cloudy day with slick roads and low light. I managed to jink just left enough to avoid getting plowed right into, but my bike's handle scraped the fender and door of the car, the body hit my right leg and pedal, and the car's side mirror collided with my arm and shattered. Hang on a second though and read that again: a collision with my bicep broke the mirror off of a car. It didn't break my arm, didn't even really leave much of a bruise, but I broke the mirror off of a car with my bicep. I am Thor.

Of course, Thor's foot and knee got a little roughed up and they hurt somewhat worrysomely today, and last night was certainly no Valhalla. I had to go to the hospital instead of to boxing, which really sucked, and the whole ordeal was pretty awful thanks to the cops. But there was a pretty great side to all of it. My awesome girlfriend Sachiko really came through and turned out to be a realy star. She totally rescued me and bailed me out of all the trouble I was in without my saying anything more than "I don't think I can meet you later, because I just had a car accident." She came to where I was in like two minutes (and later had to call a friend to have them turn the rice cooker in her house off, since she'd left mid dinner-prep) and her older brother and sister arrived about two minutes later, and then each of them telephoned about a hundred people for advice or assistance from anyone with a connection to the cops or the insurance companies. Sachiko's kin totally rallied up the whole town to help me, and her brother was my hero in standing up to the awful, awful cops. He understood exactly the things I wanted to say but didn't know how to and he did a great job of saying them for me, and it was the first time we'd ever even met! And he's the one that's lodging the complaint for me too. I'll have to tell about the cops in a whole different post; it's really insane. But Sachiko and her family were all just really wonderful. They stood by me and they translated everything from incomprehensible Japanese to comprehensible Japanese for me and answered questions for me and kept me in a really good spirit throughout the whole thing. After cops and kids and mom drove away, the brother gave me a much needed cigarette (and Sachiko was way relieved that I'd asked him for one instead of her; it's a secret from her family that she smokes), and we all talked about how awful the cops were. Sachiko had talked to my boss for me on the phone and she had called Yasu, my boxing friend, to tell him to tell me that I needed to go get checked out at the hospital. I acquiesced and she drove me out there and she fielded the desk clerks and the paperwork and hung out with me in the waiting rooms until midnight when we were finally released, and then after we left the hospital she brought me back to Yasu's house because he wanted to see if I was OK and give me a feel-better beer and yaki-soba snack. And all this in her nurse's uniform, not even changed from work. I tell you, things with her really beat the hell out things with Yuu chan during the last accident I had. In the last accident I wrecked my bike, needed fifteen x-rays instead of two, and ended up getting totally fucking abandoned by my girl in my hour of need, instead of totally taken care of. Life is funny in its cycles; last time I really needed someone and they let me down, hard, and this time I didn't even ask for help and I got huge huge support. As my sister said when I told her about all of this, Yay for people coming through. But even despite Sachiko, it's not all roses; I've got an achey leg and foot and arm and I need to get my bike looked over and I need to deal with the police and the insurance companies and my boss and I need to somehow add this all in to my already frantically overloaded schedule, and I probably need to not go to aikido for a day or two (starting after tonight's class). It could be a whole lot better, but I guess it could be worse too, and thank god for good girlfriends.

Total Recall Death!!!

This is a picture of Josh and Allison dying excruciating, tongue-popping deaths a-la Total Recall. As you can see, we had suddenly found ourselves on the surface of the moon. AAAULAAUALAAHAGAAAAAAA!!!!, as Schwarzenegger would have shouted. Click on it to view it in a bigger size or download; it's a much funnier picture at a slightly higher resolution. This was in Bako national park in Malasyia, an incredible jungle preserve that we stayed in overnight. The mountains in part of the park are heavy with iron particles, but the iron is distributed unevenly throughout the other minerals in the rock. High concentrations of iron on the surface will resist erosion by the rains and sea, and over thousands of years it's the sections of rock that are less heavily laced with iron that get washed away, leaving the raised skin you can see in the picture above. Scarred flat beds of iron hovering above purple rocky sand; it really felt like we were on another planet. One with no oxygen. AAAULAAUALAAHAGAAAAAAA!!!!

Belly of the Beast

This photo was taken from inside the colored cloths making up the lion's body in the Japanese shishi-odori, or Lion Dance (roughly). A bunch of men hold up the cloths from underneath and billow them out into the air following the lead of an ornate lion's head mask at the front. The billowing is grunt work, but doing the dance with the lion's head takes the stamina of an olympian and the training of a Balanchine star. The lion's head leads he body around every which way, usually following a pattern someone's great great great great grandfather devised to scare off demons. The mask is usually a big wood and lacquer job bedecked with a flopping jaw, lolling tongue, bulging eyes and a neat mane of jangly brass bells. It's heavy, and the dance is extraordinarily demanding. But inside the lion's body I learned one secret of the lion dance, and that is this: throughout the dance, as the lion moves and snaps and its body writhes and humps, the men under the cloths are constanty rotating who controls the head. Everyone takes several turns at controlling the head so that no one gets too burned out during the course of the dance, which can continue for hours and hours through the long, dogged afternoons of a Japanese summer festival. And the way they do it never breaks the pattern of the lion's movement. If you're watching the dance as a spectator from outside, you'd never know that the change was taking place. Only by descending into the belly of the beast did this secret become revealed to me! BWAHAHAHA!!!