Just as Japanese society is more intricate, if less varied, than U.S. society, the topography of settled Japan is more intricate than the U.S. Where we would say “this area is too broken up by mountains and inlets so we’ll build towns elsewhere” the Japanese don’t have that option. The result is an amazing number of bridges and tunnels. I have driven through more tunnels in three weeks and 4000 km. here than in my previous 24 years of driving cars. If you’re a fan of civil engineering you’ll giggle with childlike wonder every 20 miles or so as you come across a new suspension bridge, elevated road, or new tunnel.
Being illiterate is a serious impediment to navigation when you know where you want to go and robs you of the opportunity to decide whether or not a previously unknown roadside attraction is worth the stop. Even with limited Japanese, however, asking directions is very effective. One hundred percent of the time the person whom I stopped either knew where the place was or was able to figure it out after consulting a map. Not once was I given bad directions. Twenty five percent of the time the person asked would take a detour and lead me to the destination. Twenty five percent of the time the person asked would produce a map or atlas, mark it up and give it to me (scored a complete 100-page detailed street atlas for the island of Hokkaido in this manner–sadly all in Kanji except for a few route numbers but subsequently very useful).
Gas costs 2X as much as in the U.S. but the rental car is nearly 2X as efficient as my minivan so the cost of a fill-up is about the same. The price in Japan includes two attendants who pump the gas, clean the windows, walk into the street to stop traffic as you’re leaving, and bow from the waist as you drive away.
Japan essentially has no highways–imagine California with only I-5 and a few spurs. This is one of the world’s most densely populated countries with approximately 335 people per square kilometer, about the same as Israel, and more than India’s 320 per square km. For an American, coming from a country with 31 people per square kilometer, it is hard to understand how these folks get by with a network of 2-lane roads and a couple of arterial 4-lane expressways. Even when a local highway goes through a town that is mile after mile of fast food, supermarkets, Vegas-sized pachinko parlors, etc. it won’t get widened beyond 1 lane in each direction. This plus the heavy traffic results in ridiculously low average speeds, much lower than the 40, 50, and 60 kilometer per hour limits that prevail on most roads.
Such roads as the Japanese have are the apotheosis of that type of road. It might be a shoulderless 2-lane road but it is the best damn shoulderless 2-lane road in the world. Despite winter freezes you will never drive over a pothole. Overhanging poles with arrows point to the edge of the travel lane so that the snowplows can be exact. Solar panels in those poles charge up batteries all day so that they can flash with LEDs at night, reminding drivers of where the curves lead so that you don’t have to watch the white lines in your headlights as carefully. Every curve is signalled with strange white patterns painted on the pavement as you approach the curve. If a curve is sharp there will be a sign telling you exactly how sharp, e.g., “R=100m”. If a brief section goes uphill you will be told exactly how steep, e.g., “grade=3.6%”.
Given the excellence of the roads, the heavy traffic, and the low speeds one can’t help wondering how the Japanese became the world’s best engineers and builders of high-performance cars. A 1935 Hudson Terraplane would be more than adequate for getting around Japan. Even in Hokkaido there would be no way to stretch the legs of a Mazda RX-8 or Honda/Acura NSX.
Drivers here are highly skilled (number of accidents or fender-benders observed: 0) but not especially observant of the official rules. The speed limit on the mostly empty toll expressways is 80 kph but plenty of folks go 120 or faster. People try not to be the third car through a red light. Parking is simple. You stop the car wherever you feel like, turn on the hazard lights, and walk away.
And the last thing that I learned about driving in Japan… When the policeman waves you over to the side of the road and says “Speedo” he is not interested in seeing you change into your latest European-style swimwear.
I’m surprised a geek like you managed to get through 4,000 miles without noticing all the surveillance apparatus hanging from those overhead poles. Cameras, scanners, N-System units. The national police could hit a few keys on their computer and give you a printout of your itinerary during those three weeks. Japanese citizens were amazed when the Aum guys were tracked down by looking at automobile movements from 7 years previous.
Not all that stuff is for surveillance though. There are infrared and radio transmitters that send current traffic information to car navigation systems. The flashing red and yellow lines next to the roads on the navi maps indicate traffic jams. Of course the traffic jam information originally comes from some of the surveillance equipment.
They don’t think too much of your article. And I guess they should know.
http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8380&highlight=
Let’s problematic paradigms! (sic)
1. You came to Japan in August.
That is, you intentionally came to global-warming, record hot, Land-of-Concrete(tm) during the O-bon vacation rush. Obviously, you can’t be bothered with either weather sites and guidebooks.
2. You drives to see Japan.
Gee, you don’t know anybody and can’t read or speak but you’re on a Japanese driving vacation.
The problematic paradigm is that Japan is centralized society built around urban centers linked by rail. Japan is meant to be visited by train as much the blogwriter Greenspun’s America is meant to be experienced as a road trip.
–>Consider the inverse.
An illiterate Japanese tourist decides to take a 9-day rail vacation only visiting the areas around American train stations on foot.
YOUR TRIP IS IRRELAVANT.
No wonder your weblog has only two posts about Japan—you never saw real Japan:
First 24 hours in Japan 8/9/04; 7:13:16 AM
Things that I learned about driving in Japan
“Japan essentially has no highways.”??!!!
Japan has over 7000 km of national motorways (most dual-carriage way or better) criss-crossing the country. However, it’s a user-pays system and tolls apply to use the roads. The longest one, the Tohoku Expressway at over 700km, runs from Tokyo to Aomori, covers most of the territory of your trip. Using this expressway, the trip to Aomori would take about 6 hours. The corresponding (free) national road (Route 4), which you correctly describe as mostly 2-lane and heavily congeted, runs quite close to it at some times.
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2354.html
Ah, Japanese drivers… If by skilled you mean having the ability to put on makeup, talk on your cellphone, or balance an infant on your lap(!!!) while driving… by all means they are skilled. Safe is another story.
taro: We warned him, but he was intent on doing the car thing. At least he didn’t try to fly a plane in this country of almost non-existent civil aviation.
peter: multitasking while driving is true (including the fact that the law allows television in the front seat). But the drivers are very safe and courteous, I find. And I speak as a motorcycle rider, where even the slightest incidents are magnified ten times in your mind. I have rarely ever had horns honked at me, other than the microsecond “I’m here” tap. Taxi drivers in particular are really mellow. Large truck drivers are sometimes assholes, but most are okay. And consider that I’m a lane-splitting, cutting-in-front rider who would be murdered within minutes driving in the U.S.
Two things that Japanese drivers can do that US drivers simply cannot: (1) squeak through narrow streets with only centimeters on each side of the car, and (2) park in spaces only slightly longer than the car. I assume they are taught this in driving school. I got my regular and my large-engine motorcycle licences in Japan at a Japanese driving school. Although expensive, I gotta say it was a good experience and I felt safer on the roads having had the training.
Mandrake, obviously you haven’t been to NYC, Boston, Providence, Houston, San Juan, Chicago or Philly. In all of these places, you see people who easily (1) squeak through narrow streets with only centimeters on each side of the car, and (2) park in spaces only slightly longer than the car. And they do it at high speed! And with much larger vehicles!
Good article, Phil.
Taro, your troll is IRRELAVANT [sic]
First of all, August is the best time to see the Japanese countryside by car, especially Hokkaido. A lot of people are on vacation, and those you meet along the road will be in a friendly, relaxed mood. Especially in Hokkaido. O-Bon, which amounts two two peak rush periods, is a crowded rush whether you are riding trains or cars. I’d rather be in my comfortable car, though.
“Japan is meant to be visited by train”–untrue and increasingly so. Although the main lines and commuter routes are still heavily used, train routes out to the periphery are slowly being discontinued; meanwhile the buildout of large suburban shopping centers continues and people increasingly turn to cars. If anything, the country is meant to be visited by motorcycle (especially Hokkaido) or, better yet, bicycle.
I have to say, though, that Japan will probably be able to adjust the coming Oil Peak and skyrocketing oil prices a lot better than some places because of its excellent train infrastructure. Most people in Japan could somehow manage without their cars.
Comments on Phil’s article:
“The result is an amazing number of bridges and tunnels.”
These are perhaps as much a result of pork-barrel politics as geography. Big ticket big ticket public works projects that are easier to build than roads because there are fewer permissions to get from landowners. Routes are optimized to include as many tunnels and bridges as possible. What you neglect to mention in your article is the incredibly high highway and bridge tolls. I’m talking a hundred bucks for the six hour drive from Tokyo to Kobe, and another $50 to cross the Akashi bridge (which dwarfs the Golden Gate). No wonder the highways are empty.
Postwar Japanese eminent domain law reforms granted a lot of protection to landowners, and this can make it very difficult and expensive to build roads. This is one reason why there are so many chokepoints on two lane tracks in the countryside, why a two lane road suddenly narrows to the infamous 1.5 lane for a few meters, then widens again. This is also why the local arterials don’t get widened even enough for a sidewalk, much less another lane.
Unfortunately, elementary school children walk to school as a rule, and often the school route takes them down the narrow shoulder of a road with commuters racing to work, resulting in over 500 fatalities per year.
As for the cartoon layer on the roads, this increases year by year, more and more information, markings, displays, etc. Do I really need to know the road temperature and the precise grade, etc.? When I drive in another country, I have the feeling that the roads are naked. It’s kind of relaxing.
Distracted driving is still not an issue in Japan. Both government and industry want to increase the amount of information that drivers get, both in the cockpit and on the roadside. The objective is to increase the elecronics value-added component in cars from the present 15% to 50%. I was not aware, though, that it’s actually legal to drive around with a TV going in the dashboard. The TVs in factory equipped cars are required by law to shut off when cars are in gear, but that is obviously not the case for aftermarket sets.
The NSXs get tested out late at night by their dentist owners on the expressways, between the speed traps. But the hot rod youngsters prefers cars like Lancer Evolution or Nissan Skyline and heavily modded versions of these cars get driven to the limit on twisty mountain roads late at night. Or else in industrial parks and port areas, often in front of large audiences. Same with bikes, only more so.
The conventional wisdom is that the speed limit is actually 18 kilos over the posted mark, and I find that the road speed is generally around this mark, cops included. Get caught at 40 over the mark and the penalty is very severe and 60 over can result in termination of license (very hard and to get in the first place and very, very hard to get back, too)
If Japanese drivers are good, it’s partly due to the extensive and painful driver education. Another aspect is that Japanese have evolved the concept of “driving manners” and many people are careful to try and exhibit good manners. Dimming the lights while waiting at a traffic signal or the short beep given in thanks for yielding the way at a road choke point are examples of this. Being a New Yorker, I found the short beeps to be infuriating at first, kept expecting it to turn into an altercation.
Wow, there do seem to be some vitriolic comments here. I hope that my posting didn’t sound like a complaint. Really I have no complaints with this trip. The fold-flat seat on American Airlines resulted in much sleep and near-zero jetlag. The weather, as soon as I got north of Greater Tokyo, was just about perfect. When out in the national parks or on the beach there were no biting insects. Japanese tourists adopted me and took me out for dinner, invited me to stay in their homes, etc. American expats and English-speaker hotel staff helped me with any complex tasks, e.g., returning my rental car in Utsunomiya instead of Narita. Driving from small town to small town on the coast was slow as expected. Blasting south on the Tohoku Expressway (one of the handful of what we Americans would recognize as a highway) was fast as expected. All in all I saw a different side of Japan than in my previous trips when I traveled around by train.
It is kind of nice to be back in familiar territory though (just arrived at the Akasaka Prince Hotel in Tokyo, across the street from the Suntory Art Museum and the fabulous Japanese garden inside the New Otani Hotel) and it will be even nicer to get back home to friends, dog, family, airplane, helicopter, etc.
Philip, you are a real surprise, sometimes. For someone as educated (and comparatively wealthy) as you to have such little knowledge of the world outside the United States is a real shocker to me. You don’t seem like the type who would hide from foreigners, and I’m surprised that whenever you might have crossed paths with a Japanese person (and don’t tell me it hasn’t happened at MIT or at least *somewhere* Boston) this has never come up as a topic of conversation?
Don’t take this comment the wrong way, since I really do admire you, but: Brother, let me be the first to welcome you to the real big world outside, though I have only a fraction of your wealth and have never left North America (yet. And I don’t have my own plane nor the means to spend months and months away from my job, that pays the bills. Again…Yet). It sounds your education is going well, but you are, unfortuately, playing the part of the ignorant American.
Don’t feel bad though, most of my fellow countrymen usually manage to make me ashamed to be American when I’m abroad (especially in places like Mexico, where the 18 and 19 year old children like to drink themselves into obnoxious and loud stupors). It’s a real shame, since most of those places offer a lot more beyond white sands and blue oceans.
As Talking Dog mentioned, all those bridges are mostly a result of the Japanese government’s tax-and-spend approach to reviving the economy through public works projects.
Needless to say, it hasn’t worked.
Speaking of cameras on the highway.. i heard the rumor that if you’re photographed speeding on the highway (and you’re male) and you have a female in the driver’s side, that the police will throw away the photo and not bother to follow up. In Japan, privacy is respected to the utmost, and that lady may not be your wife, and so they don’t want to cause trouble for you.
BTW.. if you want to see a good example of super luxury, old fashioned hotel, check out Hotel Okura, near the US Embassy. Ask for a tour of the penthouses.. or just wander up there. if no one is staying, they may be happy to show you. These places go for about $5000 US per night. We were just wandering up there one day, and the butler was happy to show us the rooms.
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