Now that I have been driving in Japan on a regular basis since getting my Japanese driver license in late May, I have noticed certain peculiarities and differences compared to driving in America. Of course the most obvious one that comes to mind is the Japanese drive on the opposite side of the road. In Japan you drive on the left hand side of the road, where as in America you drive on the right.

The immediate implication of this is a car in Japan has its steering wheel on the right side. The turn signals, lights and blinkers are opposite of an American car, so sometimes I still turn on the wiper blades when I really want to signal a turn. Remarkably though, the gears on the stick in a manual car are still oriented the same way. First gear is still on the upper left hand side for cars in both markets. But this means where as in an America car you would shift toward your body to put a car into first gear, in Japan you would shift the stick away from your body to accomplish the same thing.

The stop line for roads in Japan are not placed at the intersection, but well ahead of the intersection. This provides some safety margin for cars stopping at an intersection. It also allows maneuvering room for cars to drive around other vehicles making unprotected turns into traffic. Also on very narrow roads it allows large vehicles like cargo trucks, dump trucks and construction vehicles more room to make turns at narrow intersections. Due to their wide size they inevitable will take up part of the oncoming traffic lanes when attempting a turn onto narrow streets.

Since the stop lines are ahead of the intersection you cannot make turns with the flow of traffic on a red light (a right turn on red in America). Cars have to remain stopped at all reds. Also since many roads are narrow, a lot of times, drivers wanting to turn onto your road will yield the road to you first. That way you vacate the lane so they can complete turn after you. Also the traffic lights here are staggered meaning that lights at intersections don't switch from green to red and vice versa at the same time. There's a delay before the cross traffic will get their green light. People know this and take advantage of it, so you see more cars running reds just before the other traffic turns green.

One of the most annoying things that Japanese drivers do is that they don't always obey the lane lines. This has almost caused several accidents for me. For example, in America if both lanes are packed with cars and there is a empty third lane up ahead to make a left turn, drivers won't use the lane for the opposing traffic to bypass the traffic jam and move into the empty left turn lane. Also if there is painted lines saying the area is blocked off, Americans will obey the rules and not use the lane. Here the Japanese drivers will go into the sectioned off areas to take short cuts to the lanes they want to go to. It always seems like they are in a hurry to get somewhere even though most of the driving they do is city driving where you're at the mercy of the delays of the traffic light.

I was trying to buy some bananas at a supermarket today and it turned out they were all sold out. So, I went to another supermarket nearby my house, and it was sold out there as well. WTF?

Turns out there is a banana diet craze going on in Japan right now, and there are no bananas to be had! This diet advocates losing weight by eating a breakfast of only bananas (eat as much as you want) and water. Then for the rest of the meals during the day, you can eat anything you want! Anyone want to be my guinea pig?