The Road to Drift King

In mid-November, I signed up for driving school. How I managed to make it to 40 without ever operating a vehicle was due to a combination of good public transportation, the kindness of friends, bicycles, and Ubers. Depending on public transportation while in Tokyo is easy – we have layers of subway lines and trains that make the need for a car almost obsolete – and getting around by bike in Boston wasn’t difficult either. I assumed, too, that future outdoor excursions would primarily happen on two (unmotorized) wheels. Given that I would likely never need to own a car here, and the cost of driving school in Japan, I kept putting it off. Besides, Uber exists for a reason, right?

What I did not exactly think through is that while Ubers and taxis and friends can drop me off at a trailhead, getting transportation back to civilization from a point where cell phone reception is sketchy, at best, is more complicated. The idea of having a metal box with wheels to plunge into when a bear or cougar inevitably chases me down a mountain provided some further reassurance from involuntary death. Around the time of this realization, friends also started – quite inconveniently – to have children that they preferred or were required to pilot around to avoid being featured on Dateline. All of which indicated that I needed to do what I should have done 20 years ago: learn how to become the Drift King of Tokyo.

So far, learning how to drive has involved more homicide than I’d expected. My first hour at driving school consisted of an aptitude test that asked whether I’d considered killing myself and how much I resented others. I assume this is a low-tech way for the government to gather psychological information on its citizens, which I promptly handed over because I’d really like to drive a car.  A lecture on driving safety was followed up by a video showing a man killing a child in a crosswalk and his subsequent imprisonment. While a voiceover warned about criminal penalties, the man, dressed in a prison-issue sweat suit, desperately pleaded with his weeping wife through a thick plastic wall. Another lecture involved how not to use your car horn if you don’t want to get murdered, or worse, judged, by strangers.

As for the actual driving itself, well, good luck to everyone else. Movies always show the protagonist, a.k.a. Vin Diesel, dramatically shifting into top gear. I shifted into 2nd with the same flair only to have my instructor grab the steering wheel and gently turn the car to avoid driving into the other lane. Within the first week of driving school, I was instructed to stop and start on a steep slope. I immediately rolled back at least a meter while trying to start the car, three times. A couple days later, I was told to negotiate narrow S-turns. It felt like playing Operation, with only my left foot pumping the clutch for navigation.

The process to “join the motoring community” as the driving school textbook calls it, is more mentally draining than I’d expected. The steering wheel and I continue to have our differences. At this age, or because I haven’t been in a formal learning environment for over a decade, attempting to absorb information and accurately and consistently repeat actions for more than an hour turns my brain into oatmeal. My choice of the semi-English course – where the lectures are in English but the driving lessons are in Japanese – means that I am also trying to translate my thoughts into Japanese as I steer, slow, and stop. I can feel steam coming out of my ears as my 40-year-old meat computer gradually overheats and ceases to function.

Driving school also apparently includes lesson on how to manage someone else’s emotions while under stress. So far, two instructors have lost their tenuous grasp on emotional stability with me at the wheel. This either confirms that I am doing my part to terrorize them, or that they have misplaced passenger princess expectations. One male instructor got so upset he made me sit in the passenger seat while he turned at speed before slamming on the brakes, to punish me for my poor driving. It seemed dramatic, even for me. I considered trying to translate “bro, chill” into Japanese, couldn’t come up with anything, and instead hoped he wouldn’t run me over on the way out.

Incredulously, my learner’s permit test is scheduled for the end of this week, after which I’ll be let loose with an instructor on open roads. I have little to no hope of actually passing, but no one ever said the road to becoming Drift King would be easy. Plus, there can’t be much of a villain/vigilante story without failures that will shake the core of my car-driving being, right?

And until then, well, just call me the Engine Stall Queen.

Happy (Late) Halloween

With my dog’s costume lost somewhere in the mail, I dressed up as my Muay Thai coach this year. I sewed on the fringe to my shorts, found a jersey (he wears soccer jerseys other days), and hid my mustache under a mask while I walked to the gym.

My coach just shook his head at me.

A Muay Thai Reality

A few Saturdays ago, I was curled up in a corner, gasping for breath as I got lightly tapped on the top of my head, arms, sides, then took a knee to the stomach. “TKO,” the attacker said triumphantly, “TKO! TKOTKOTKO!” I managed to emit a strangled wail as the assault continued, finally ending with me laughing at my own ineptitude as I was tossed aside after a final knee tap to the liver. Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds left.

In early May, I had the idea that I should try something new. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu seemed appealing enough to require research into local gyms, until a best friend showed me an article on Mark Zuckerberg’s love for the sport. I looked into Muay Thai and called a gym recommended on Reddit, conveniently only a train stop away.

“Do you offer trial lessons?” I said.

“Yes, when are you coming,” the woman on the other end demanded.

“Um, this Saturday?”

“Ok, what time.”

“Uh…noon?”

“Ok, see you then.”

I hung up, now obliged to actually follow through. A crushing fear of disappointing people I didn’t yet know and somehow developing a reputation for unreliability led me to a Muay Thai gym that Saturday. It was a small space; sparse and utilitarian in the way you’d expect a serious gym to be. There were two heavy bags, a small ring, and shelving piled high with strike pads, gloves, shin pads, and belly pads. Over the course of the next 90 minutes, I learned that keeping my upper arms parallel to the ground for more than 20 seconds can be excruciating. I also almost died about ten times.

You hear it all the time – “it got me in the best shape of my life” – and usually it means that if you’ve been spending the last six or more months melting into a couch, some activity will change you for the better. Rarely has that phrase rung true for me absent some dedicated effort. Cycling required hundreds of miles and constant starvation. CrossFit got me reasonably fit but also rendered me perpetually injured. Weightlifting was great for my butt but would never help me run from perverts or natural disasters.

The issue was likely that all of the sports I’ve previously poured myself into didn’t ask much of me, so I consequently only gave just enough. I could cycle, CrossFit, and lift on low energy and little sleep as long as I had some supply of Coke (the drink). I could eat too little the previous day or fail to hydrate properly or subsist on cereal and still bang out a ride, a WOD, or a heavy snatch session. Even when I treated my body a bit better and prioritized sleep, nothing had significantly changed my physique. My body remained the same; so much so that an older gentleman at my local Gold’s Gym exclaimed that I “haven’t changed at all!” after nearly a year away at a CrossFit box.

Evidently, what I needed all along was a sport that required constant and adequate hydration, nutrition, and sleep with the alternative being certain incapacitation and/or the kind of embarrassment you can’t recover from. I dropped 1.5kg in a month – likely due to a coach that excels in gassing me out over the course of every session – despite eating significantly more. The twisting and continuous movement of Muay Thai worked muscles I didn’t know existed. My shorts got looser and for the first time in years, my progress pictures showed visible changes. At close to 40, a pop soundtrack and a ruthless Thai man are getting me into the best shape of my life.

Between smacking strike pads and my labored breathing, my coach has half hummed, then broke out into song, to the Justin Bieber classic, “Baby.” I’ve wiped my face, wet with sweat, on equally wet shoulders between dodging, blocking, and getting tangled up in the coach’s grabby feet to Anne-Marie’s “2002.” Akon’s “Smack That (feat. Eminem)” has been the soundtrack to trying to spar, which, at least half the time, has ended up with me getting gently wiped out on the ring floor. However hard those three-minute rounds are, however inept my movements are on any day, I always end up laughing. I am completely hooked.

A week after I shuffled around the ring in a standing fetal position while being battered from all directions, my coach left for vacation. “Have fun!” I said, “I’ll be stronger when you get back.” He nodded, deadpan, crushing my unrealistic dream.

His estimation of my abilities is likely accurate, but given that I’ve started Muay Thai at 39 with zero previous martial arts experience, it’s equally optimistic for my coach to expect me to understand reality. Besides, where would the fun be in that?

A December Jalapeno

Late in July, I sprouted jalapeno seeds. Despite my tardiness in planting them and consequent general neglect, they managed to put on, first, flowers, then a handful of peppers. Though Tokyo winters are mild, I’d expected them to wither away by November, and was surprised by their apparent resolve to survive. A few weeks ago, accepting that they were determined to live – if only out of spite – I dragged them inside into slightly warmer temperatures.

I’ve felt like those jalapeno plants a lot this past decade, striving to thrive but not given the best circumstances to do so. I expected 2022 to be similar to the ten preceding years; the kind where I exit the year resigned that I’d remained stuck in the same place I found myself in 2021, with little hope that the coming year would be much better. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I was prepared to go through the motions again this year, for whatever it is I’m supposed to be living for.

For a year that started with lingering pandemic stagnation and the kind of apathy where I struggled to even mindlessly binge Netflix, 2022 ended on a surprising note. There was no big event, no “aha” moment where things clicked into place as movies and other forms of fiction may have you believe. Instead, it was a cohesion of little hopes and efforts, big support from a best friend of decades, and a lot of luck, snowballing into something to be optimistic about. For the first time in a long time, I’m ending the year feeling lucky, prepared to make 2023 a brighter one.

That’s not to say that the future will consist of easy coasting, but I feel secure – for maybe the first time in my life – that there will be a wheel to draft, a lead out when needed, and a spot when I’m struggling, that does not solely consist of an overburdened best friend. I also know that should I find myself out of luck, with a little help from friends, that I can find my way back to where I need to be. Which is essentially to say that at 39, my life is starting to feel like my own and that I’m not so horrified at where its headed.

As friends and motivational Instagram posts have reminded me, it’s always harder to hope. Giving up absolves one of any effort; it’s easy to surrender to a half-lived life. I concede that I’ve done the latter too much this decade, to the obvious dismay of friends who have attempted to smack sense into me while never failing to push and pull me up when I was down. To those of you who have been there, please accept my profuse apologies, eternal gratitude, and the promise that I will hope harder.

Thank you. I love you. And let’s go 2023!