Skid row

 So on Tuesday last week I got to leave the middle of nowhere to travel to the thriving metropolis that is Morioka, the reason being was that I had a date with a skid pan...

Iwate and Tohoku get a lot of snow and I, being a person who has not driven a car in snow before (or actually owned a car at any point in my life) figured I should probably try and get prepared for this - or rather the Guru rightly thought I should. So Tuesday night down to Morioka on one of the infrequent Hanawa line trains (the reason you need a car) for a night on the tiles in a city that doesn't have a roofing emporia. I got to the city, found the hotel and realised I was surprised to see groups of people again, which was weird as I'd only been living up here for about 10 days, but walking through the station mall trying to find somewhere for dinner was quite odd for some reason.

The reason for staying the night was that the driving lesson started at 9. 30 and was some way out of the city, so up early, a few work emails then a taxi to the driving school - that the taxi cost nore thhan the lesson was something we'll not dwell, then again the alternative travel arrangements were not, as we shall see, particularly plentiful. Oh, and a note to say that Tuesday night was the first snow of the season...

I was shown to a portacabin that nicely warm and waited, slowly the room filled and in total there were 8 of us, though only 7 to begin with as one bloke went to the wrong driving school site - oops, glad it wasn't me. So two groups of 4, our group gets to watch the obligatory videos first while the other group gets to have fun in the cars. The videos are pretty much what you'd expect - it's slippery, drive carefully, take it slow and smooth, don't give it plenty of welly on a curve if you don't want to come a cropper - that sort of thing. Of course while we were watching there were all sorts of interesting noises coming from the skid pan and a quick look out the window confirmed the drivers were having fun. 

The other 3 guys in my group (#3 finally arrived late) were all employees of Kirin beverage, in fact all the participants except me had been sent by their companies, and all had been transferred up to Iwate recently - cue lots of knowing smiles, the company, huh... They seemed like nice guys and were pleasantly chatty so I was thinking that if I asked one of them they might give me a lift back into Morioka (everyone but me had driven to the pan), so keeping that in mind we headed out once the first group were done.

As is typical with driving lessons in Japan you share a car with 2-3 trainees and one instructor, which for me is another oddity but there you go, I graciously allowed the other guy to go first, how nice of me, as this was all being done in Japanese and while I was doing pretty well at following everything, watching someone else do the drills first seemed like a smart move on my part. Added to this was the fact that this, it suddenly dawned on me, was the first time I was going to have driven a car in over a year. Oops.

The actual driving bit was quite short in all honesty, you got to make 4 passes through the pan with varying degrees of 'try to brake/turn, see what happens', the first runs without the ABS switched on and then with. Goodness me ABS makes a difference! How did people drive safely before? Then the last bit was a handbrake turn to make you skid properly and then attempt to steer your way out of the slide - let's just say if this happens to me the roads better be pretty wide...

It was useful though as I have never been in an out of control car before so being in one in a controlled environment was really helpful and a bit of an eye opener. But then I had to get home. So as I mentioned I had been thinking to ask one of the nice Kirin guys for a lift but, as I was the only non-company person there they all got to leave while I had to go and pay, and as I was doing this everyone else buggered off. As I didn't want to call a taxi (it would have been doubly expensive) I asked the instructor chap if the bus stop was 'over there?', gesticulating vaguely. He looked at me as if I was mad and asked how I got there in the first place and another instructor piped up with "taxi" and a smirk, Smiling amused smiles to themselves the main instructor then, kindly I must say, offered to drive me to the bus stop, which was good of him as the weather was changeable to say the least.

So we hopped in the car for the short drive to what turned out to be the bus depot, though that's stretching it a little. Out side I asked a lady what time the bus for Morika left, she looked at me as if I had asked  to bed her daughter and scurried inside to ask (turns out she was a cleaner so fair enough), she returned with 1155, so a 20 minute wait, ok. As it was chilly I went inside the depot as they had a waiting bench, cue stunned silence from the 2 people working in there, reminiscent of the pub in American Werewolf in London. I smiled, they stared. To break the tension I asked how long roughly it took to Morioka, about an hour maybe? This led to much shuffling of paper and frantic searching as if no one had ever wondered such a thing, what was really odd was that the driver was sitting there and you'd ave thought he'd be able to knock that one out of the park straight away but apparently the appearance of anyone, let along a Japanese speaking gaijn, at the depot had struck everyone temporarily dumb. But it was confirmed, about an hour - I thought prudent at that point not to try and engage them in any more small talk.

The journey back itself was rural and quite interesting, but only in a once-is-enough kind of way. However because it took so long I did miss the 12.47 Hanawa line train back to Appikogen and as is often the case in this part of the world the next train was at 16:40. What to do with 4 hours to kill in Morioka? Sit in the library and work seemed to be the best option, at least the wifi was free.