We usually walk to school, or ride bikes to school.
Some take trains, some take busses
but usually you cannot drive a car to school.
In Japan you cannot get a regular car license until you turn 18
so no cars.
Maybe some students ride the mopeds or school busses, but...
I've never seen them around this area.
In my high school almost everyone rode bikes to school.
But some students lived really far from school, and I was one of them. Which sucks.
My high school was about 9km away from my house.
And it took me about 30 minutes to get to school.
Well, looking back maybe it was good exercise, but still...
I complained about it to one of my friends, but it took him
about 1 hour to get to school, to get to his school.
So I couldn't really complain.
However,
on rainy days, and windy, snowy, on these days it's really annoying.
So for example, like winter
sometimes roads get frozen, which is very dangerous.
One time when I was riding on a path in a rice paddy,
I saw a car come in front of me,
so, I was really... the road was really narrow and I wanted to stop
because it was dangerous.
So I try to brake my bike,
but it wouldn't stop.
Since roads were frozen my bike slipped, and then I accidentally
fell on the ground, fell in the road right in front of this car. And then
I got hit by a car!
Fortunately the car was driving really slowly so I was fine, but...
it was... it was really scary.
I even had to go to school when there were typhoons. If you've never had the
experience of riding the bike with an umbrella you might not understand, but...
it's really, really difficult and tiring.
Your arms gets really tired.
I had to switch hands a lot.
If you have the umbrella staight up
like this
なんて説明すればいいかなあ？ (How should I explain this?)
This is an umbrella, this is like the stick.
If you have it straight up the air gets caught underneath umbrella,
and then it pulls it up.
So...
it pulls it up. It's really annoying! Like...
like that. So you have to make the umbrella
aerodynamic so the air goes over it.
So,
not straight up, like this. And then
make the air goes over the umbrella.
Otherwise it just get blown away. It's really, really tiring!
You might think I'm just weak
because I'm Japanese or something...
But back then I used to be a pitcher in my baseball club, and I was pretty strong.
My arms were like this big and I got this much muscle...
I was a man!
Anyway, my arms...
I think it was relatively stronger than other people...
I guess? I could throw a softball farther than 100 meters.
One time when I was riding on a path in rice paddy again
I was fighting against the wind,
struggling to find the best angle to make the air gets over the umbrella...
But unfortunately, the umbrella wasn't strong enough
and then his body snapped in half, and...
hit me in my forehead...
and got blown away...
into rice paddy.
I didn't know what happened for a couple seconds, but...
the umbrella was just not strong enough, and I laughed so hard.
And I didn't know that I was bleeding, my forehead was bleeding.
My blood was like all over my face.
But since it was really windy and rainy I didn't really know.
And um,
at the school, at my school at the gates
we had a teachers that make the students greet to them.
Or like make... correct the students uniforms and stuff.
And there was a teacher who was really...
mean, and kinda scary. Well, I mean his... his face was really scary.
And he was always yelling, and not very many people liked him.
And he was like
"Tuck your fucking shirt in!" and
"Your skirt is freaking too short!"
He was just mean. When I get to school, at the gate
this teacher stare at me and come to me and yell at me
kind of like screaming saying that, "What the fuck...
is wrong with your face?!
Did you get in a car accident or something?!"
And since this teacher was really loud,
we got like everyone's attention around us, everyone was staring at us. And...
I get offended.
I almost said,
"What the fuck is wrong with YOUR face?
Did you get in a car accident when you were in high school?"
I managed it. I didn't say that.
But um...
anyway, he made me realize I was bleeding
my forehead's bleeding.
So I thanked him and I went to 保健室.
保健室?
Nursing room?
So, yeah.
Riding a bike, holding an umbrella...
it's dangerous.
Even though your arms are really strong,
and you might think it's a really good exercise or something.
From the viewpoint of riding a bike properly it's dangerous.
You should use both hands to hold the handles.
So if you're planning on doing a high school exchange in Japan
I highly recommend you trying to live as close to school as possible.
近いホストファミリーを探すといいと思います。