The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

A cute little older lady gave me these post cards yesterday. You'd think that was the start of lighthearted story of how nice people are in Japan. And it is a story about how people are nice in Japan...just in the craziest times.

Yesterday, I got into my first car accident after having driven for almost 10 years! It's nice to say that I never got into a car accident in my younger years of driving, but still SUCKS that it happened in Japan...at least it won't affect my insurance when I go back to America as they will know nothing about it :)

Unfortunately, it also sucks getting into a car accident in a foreign country with no prior knowledge as to how things work. So I was driving kinda out in the country, but there was a stoplight. I was trying to look whether I was supposed to turn or go straight. I think the car in front of me had already turned right (remember right turns are across traffic as Japan drives on the opposite side of the road), so I thought it was clear and I was looking at the signs to make sure I was turning in the right spot and turned despite the oncoming car. It was a green light, but I was supposed to yield of course, so the accident was 100% my fault. I felt like an idiot.

The lady was really nice, obviously, she gave me that stack of post cards. She called the police and I called my old supervisor to talk to the lady. She gave her all my info and I gave the lady my insurance card and we waited for the police. I really don't know what all went down when the policeman was there as the other lady did all the talking, but frankly it didn't matter. She couldn't try to blame anything on me that wasn't actually my fault, because I had no excuses to make to defend myself.

My car and hers were both still drivable and neither of us was hurt. I was wearing my seatbelt and I think nothing like a car accident will make you realize how important that is! I probably would have gotten hurt had I not been wearing it! I had to bed the front part of my car back up because it was rubbing against my tire, but then I was able to drive away from the scene. The other lady's car didn't have too terrible of damage either (see below). I have what I think is good insurance, it was the highest of three levels from the company that my car dealer recommended, so I guess we'll see how much I end up paying out of pocket. Hopefully shouldn't be too much.

After that, I pretty much moped around all day yesterday and felt like crap. Feeling better about the situation today, but will be once again embarrassed tomorrow when I have to drive my dented in car to school and then hope that one of my teachers can bring me to the car shop. If not, Dion's gonna have to help me and we'll explore the Japanese system of car accidents together. I guess all in all, not too terrible of an experience as the cop and the other lady were really nice, neither of us was hurt, and we were still able to drive away our dented cars.