Everyday I commute to Tokushima City to where I work. I know a lot of you have no idea what this means geographically but let me tell you that there are 50km between where I live and where I work.
Now, this might take me about 40min or so under normal circumstances but the speed limit on the local road here is a rapid 50km/h. So it takes me a little over an hour to get to and from work everyday. On the bright side, I'm slowly becoming a better manual-car driver. There is another road called the Tokushima Expressway where the limit is a resounding 80km/h. No one actually follows this and cars regularly whiz by at 100k+. I took my little car to explore this highway only to find the poor thing just couldn't keep up. It only goes up to a 4th gear and anything beyond 80 was really pushing it. At one point I had managed to push it up to 90 and thought the engine would explode at any time. Not to mention I was the front car of an unintended convoy.
There are some other idiosyncrasies about driving in this country, mainly because of the whole driving in the left-hand lane thing. For instance, coming out of parking lots I naturally tend to veer to the right side but here, that's where cars enter. Pulling up to a toll booth the other day made me realize I really hadn't totally adjusted to driving here. I drifted to the left side, and looked up expectantly only to see a smooth expanse of metal. Momentarily confused, I looked to my right to see the toll booth worker looking at me with a "what does she think she's doing?" expression on his face. He was nice enough to come out of his booth and actually hand me the ticket I was supposed to take from the machine.
And that, my friends, is the end of this story.
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