When Love Breaks Down

Some notes on the 2001 Japan Times column below, entitled, “When Love Breaks Down.”

1.     The publication date was 2001. Thus, the textual note of “for five years” results in a nod to 1996. That same nod, as of 2025, now means 29 years. Yet, the added distance has altered nothing. I am without a car even now.

2.     Many, many Tokyoites drive, as Japan is a slice of car heaven. But not many take their vehicles into the city for work, for that is a slice of hell.

3.     I drive a rental about once a year, the last time on a whale-watching jaunt to the island of Amami-Oshima in 2024. No, I didn’t use the car to hunt whales, though that might have been more successful. I rented from the airport in the north to my hotel in the south, a two-hour drive.

4.     Saturns? Windstars? Yeah, there used to be American autos with those names, but they have since followed Edsels and Ford Pintos down the manufacturing road to oblivion.

5.     Nor does Toyota continue to make Toyopets. Ah, but there was a car! More of a warrior than an auto. I miss her still.

6.     For non-metric readers, 58 kilometers is about 36 miles.

And now… please read, “When Love Breaks Down!"

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When Love Breaks Down

Aug 5, 2001

I was beachball-eyed with love.

In fact, when we first met, I couldn't take those eyes away. She was stunning.

I pledged my devotion and we traveled everywhere together, merrily rolling over the hills and valleys of life. Rarely have I been so happy.

Then -- slowly -- the years took their toll. She began to age. She lost the pep of her younger days. She lost some beauty too. She remained steadfast and responded eagerly to my every request, yet… I couldn't help it. My eyes began to wander.

She began to have minor aches and pains. A persistent cough in the morning. A stiffness in her movements. Nothing too serious, but… I felt our once-close relationship had reached its limits. Better to end it now while she still had the figure to catch another man. And I did what I thought I would never do.

I dumped her.

That's right. I said, "Sayonara”… to my car.

Sayonara

I have not, however, flirted with newer, cuter models. Instead, I have remained auto-less, just another plodding pedestrian in Japan's commuter hell.

That I have lived without a car for five years pushes my U.S. family into mental somersaults. Like many Americans, they tie cars to personal freedom, picturing themselves as modern day cowboys astride Saturns and Windstars instead of ponies and quarter horses.

If they're not inside a building, they're inside a car. Anyone who lives otherwise, they feel, needs to have their gearbox checked.

"What do you do," a sister asks, her eyes wide with wonder, "when you need groceries? Do you ask a friend to drive or what?"

"No…" I brake into my answer to build the suspense.

"I… walk."

"Arrgh!" Her tongue flops out and her eyes roll like panels on a slot machine, as if her head was roped to a blackboard being fingernailed by Catwoman.

"The store's not so far. Only six minutes."

"Arrgh!" She starts to slobber.

"Of course, when it rains, I use an umbrella."

"Arrgh!"

This last revelation about life sans wheels is too much for her. Her head droops and the slots come up -- What else? -- lemons.

Twenty years ago, when I first arrived in Japan, my sister's attitude would have been my own. How could I live without a car? I felt my entire life had been jammed on idle.

Then I spied my first Japanese streets -- overrun with autos,

scooters, and bicycles, every vehicle bustling the wrong way (on the left side!) often down roads not much wider than double beds, hemmed by open gutters and walls on both sides -- and I thought:

Hmm. Maybe I can live without a car.

But by now Fate had her evil eye on me. I ended up in Kumamoto, where the shortest distance between two points proved to be a curlicue -- one that was best traversed in a car.

A countryside street

My baptism into Japanese traffic was brutal. I spent more time in gutters than a bowling ball. I slipped off ribbon-like roads straight into rice paddies. I stalled my car in places so vital for local commerce that every single vehicle in the city honked at me at least once.

Yet, I adapted. And soon the stop-go scooting about changed from a horror show back into a Wild West romp. I was a cowpoke again, atop my Toyopet, yahooing to adventure through the roads and alleyways of Kumamoto. Driving became a gas.

The Toyopet passed on, and I fell in love with a diamond blue Nissan.

When we moved to Tokyo, there was no question about whether I would bring my darling car. Why get sliced-and-diced into a commuter train each day, when I could drive to work? After all, didn't a car guarantee:

1. I would get a seat each day.

2. I could stretch without clubbing my neighbor in the jaw.

3. I could ride the whole way without having to inhale someone's breakfast breath.

4. I could crank my music till the road began to bounce.

So, on my very first Tokyo morning I hopped in the saddle and drove the 58 kilometers to work…

Taking only two and a half hours to arrive.

Tokyo streets grow traffic lights like weeds. This wasn't driving; it

The commute home

was block-by-block property appraisal -- with every block looking exactly the same.

In no time at all I was weaned off the roads. My dear car spent her days snoozing in a parking space, only being roused for weekend jaunts to restaurants or stores.

The lack of action seemed to wear her down and she struggled to perform. I felt sorry for the old gal.

Till I got the bill for the biennial auto check. Then I felt sorry for me -- paying so much for a luxury I hardly used.

Hence, I made the full leap: from tires to feet, from road to rails, from stick shift to commuter strap.

Sure, at times I miss it. Sometimes, as I inch down a sidewalk rivered with hot, sluggish pedestrians, I sigh and hunger for my car.

Not so much to drive, as just to lay on the horn and scare the beans out of people.

"This city is no place for an automobile," my wife will lecture.

"Besides, the car was over the hill. You were smart to get rid of it."

Then she coughs. Our eyes meet in an awkward silence that she rushes to break, tooting...

"Just don't let it give you ideas."

Perhaps AI-generated, but you get the idea; It can be a crowded place.

© Thomas Noah Wood

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