I hate HATE driving in Japan.
I could be biased since I never liked driving back in the US either and see driving as a chore that consumes time.
I have a lot of nit picks about driving in Japan and I love to bitch about it. Most of the problems with driving in Japan, in my opinion, arise from the fact that the country was not planned around driving being a core part of their society. They placed more focus on trains, walking, and biking. So, my problems.
1) Speed. I don't know what speed limits are in countries outside Japan or the US, so maybe its just the US is speed freaks. In Japan, doing anything by cars is SLOW and TIME-CONSUMING. You do not get anywhere fast in a car. The speed limit on normal roads in Japan ranges from 40KPH to 50KPH, for the metric challenged that's 25-30MPH. The highways (高速道路) are faster with a speed limit of 100KPH but they're faster for a reason, more lanes. In reality though, there are no speed limits on the highways. I've never seen cops on the highways.
2) No Passing. As I stated above, Japan wasn't planned around cars and so as a result no one sees any reason to add lanes to roads. If you are driving in the cities you probably have 2 lanes to work with but anything outside the cities is almost ALWAYS 1 lane traffic with a lot of winding roads. As a result, you can't ever pass the person that's literally driving 40KPH, and most of the time the road has "no pass" lines as well. Even if you didn't give a shit about such law, you probably still can't pass safely because its more likely the slow car is 4-5 cars ahead of you.
3) Road size. Tieing in with the points above. Roads are narrow in Japan. This is kind of common knowledge now, but you really can't appreciate how much of an annoyance this is until you have to drive on the roads with a car. If you come from the US, you are probably use to having somewhere between a 1/2 to 2/3 of a car length between you and the cars in the on coming lane. This is NOT the case in Japan on country roads. If you have 1/2 a car length, consider your self lucky. On many roads that I drive on you usually have 1/4 or less. You can reach out and touch cars as you go by if you wanted in many cases.
4) Pedestrians. Often times the thing that will slow you down the most is the fact that you have to slow down to be safe. As many know, roads are really really narrow in Japan which places side streets, parked cars, and the side of the street close to you. As a result you have to really drive cautious because people are stupid. Many people don't stop when coming out of side streets or exiting buildings and will sometimes step right into the street. People are STUPID. I've seen a biker riding on a side walk suddenly decide he wants to ride in the road with the cars and swerved out into the road with a car only 3-4 meters behind him. I watched the car swerve to avoid hitting him. Dude never bothered to check if there was a car or anything. People are STUPID.
5) Traffic lights. There are a lot of traffic lights which are not sensor tripped. Many change every 2-3 minutes. This helps to cut and spread traffic out though so you don't have a 3Km line of cars stuck behind 1 car, but it still comes pretty close.
6) Headlights. Only for use when its dark. Raining? Nope. Snowing? Nope. Foggy? Nope. And if people use anything during the day, its their dinky parking lights which don't increase visibility. This is a pet peeve of mine.
7) Old people. Japan has a large number of old people that drive and everyone knows what kind of problems that can cause. The only thing I like here in Japan is that old people have to put a sticker on their car when they turn 65(?). Gives you some idea. But you still have to worry about the depth perception problems that many of them have and everything...and then remember how much clearance you have between their car and yours often enough.
All of the above issues turn Japan into a country where driving is almost always an "Always-on" process compared to something that can be "auto-pilot" sometimes. If Google were to ever market their self-driving car. Japan should be the first country they do it in, because of safety issues with random things popping out, tracking other cars, and above all, the fact that driving is more time consuming than it should be; it'd make a splash here.
Just to give a concrete example of what I mean on time. One drive that I make sometimes is between my rural town and the prefecture capital. Its 54Km (33 miles) and takes anywhere between an 1h to 1h30m to drive; I could do that in 20-30 minutes in the US.
Japan is a SHIT country to drive in. The only benefit I've found to having a car is Costco.
Last edited by vix86 (2013 February 22, 12:48 am)
None too close by when I go to my wife's parent's house in Chiba. Not everywhere has the convenience of Tokyo.
