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.

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?

Operation Mallard

I recently applied for a job that required a timed cognitive test that was supposed to discern how quickly I could reason and solve problems. “Reason,” in this case was defined as the ability to calculate percentages and add large numbers without a calculator. It was probably not a great idea to aspire to intellectual heights on a random Wednesday, but a delusional sense of optimism won out.

It went relatively badly. Seconds evaporated as I attempted to remember how to add, divide, and multiply. The test told me I wasn’t nearly as smart as I’d hoped.

The uncomfortable amount of stress sweat dampening my armpits affirmed that I probably wouldn’t enjoy a position where I was required to calculate 34% of 620 within five seconds. At the very least, I was now free to work from home and avoid stressful situations.  

Less than twenty-four hours later, I was standing on the second flight of internal stairs leading to our rooftop, surrounded by leaping ducklings running towards a distressed mother honking angrily one flight down. The Internet had informed us that mallards will depart from their nest around sunrise; an earlier morning check had confirmed no ducklings were present. My father went to take a casual look around noon and found six ducklings and their mother stuck in on our enclosed rooftop. Chaos then ensued.

“Get them!” my own mother said, shoving a cardboard box at me.

As I scooped the adorable, fluffy, helpless things into the box, they leapt out of confinement, scattering along the staircase. They ran towards each other, huddled, then tumbled down the remainder of the stairs where their mother was frantically pressing herself against a window looking out to a balcony. Outdoor access was still one more flight down.

The problem with ducks is that they apparently cannot descend stairs. The mother mallard would hop down one step and look back to have her children follow. She would hop down another step, lose her balance, then half fall, half fly down the stairs. The ducklings would rush to follow and launch themselves head over tail.

Once outside, another issue presented itself. The duck went the wrong way. Spooked by a passing truck and admiring pedestrians, she walked in the opposite direction of the nearest body of water. She only agreed to leave after a couple of crows made their appearance in the lower branches of nearby trees. My mother pointed her umbrella at the nearest crow as my aunt and I used our bodies to direct the duck towards water.

Finally on the right path towards the river, we relaxed. Until we noticed that the storm drains situated on the side of the street were just slightly bigger than a duckling. Scrambling together and over each other to keep up with their mother, the ducklings seemed unconcerned with this obvious danger. Three minutes later, two fell in.

Stressful situations are useful in that they show you the character of a person. First, we all gasped. Next, my mother immediately said we had no choice but to leave them. My aunt agreed. The duck stopped in her tracks, realizing that she was two ducklings short. I looked down the storm drain and saw two ducklings staring upwards, chirping for help.

The storm drain wasn’t deep, the bottom was within arm’s reach. I had to try. I inserted my hands into the two slots and pulled. The lid shifted, then rose off the street. Then, to my mother’s horror, I laid down and dived head first into a cloud of mosquitos to scoop up two squirming distressed baby ducks.

I am convinced that ducklings are heart-meltingly adorable to ensure that humans will be less likely to drive over them. We stopped cars whose drivers’ faces lit up at the subjects of our exhausted escort. By now on the main street in my town, couples holding hands, older ladies on bicycles, kids coming home from baseball practice, all stopped to take pictures. It was only several days later that I realized I’d never seen a mother duck strutting along the street with her young, in Tokyo. For about fifteen minutes, we navigated around a parking lot where, at one point, the mother duck hid in some bushes, panting and stressed. It was a convenient hiding place from pedestrians but it didn’t lead to water. My aunt managed to inadvertently get it out of its hiding place by trying to “cool it off” by pouring water on it.

Another 100 meters of public sidewalk populated by too many people, and we were able to push the duck gang into a side street that led straight to the river. With less people on the street, the mother duck seemed to perk up and waddled forwards more confidently. A car slowed behind us and when it finally passed, almost motivated the duck to turn into another, unrelated side street. I blocked it by standing in the middle of its path; it eyed me with frustration before proceeding to the bridge just up ahead.

The Kanda River is the kind of river you’d expect to see in central Tokyo. Greenish-brown, shallow water flows between tall concrete banks. There are shrubs and cherry trees planted on the tops of the concrete banks, but the river itself appears more like a man-made canal contained for the sake of real estate development. You’d never want to swim in it, but it looks like it has enough creepy crawly things inside to keep water fowl well fed.

The duck stopped at the middle of the bridge and looked at the river, almost pleased at the view. Honking again, she launched herself into the air and down to the water. The ducklings looked on, huddling on the edge of the bridge. It was a good ten meters down. As I stood up to get a picture of the ducklings before they forever left us, one leaped over the edge and dropped into the water, immediately bobbing up to the surface like a cork. The others prepared to take the plunge when I saw my mother’s hand shove them off the edge. She would later claim that it was to keep them from returning towards the street. In reality, I think she was just tired of dealing with them.

They swam away, all six ducklings with their mother, down the river. We cheered, our faces red from the heat and sun. Since then, my mother has said she doesn’t want it to come back, that she doesn’t want to worry about another duckling parade again.

 Deep down, though, she totally does. A couple days ago, she asked me where we should keep the trellis guard in the meantime, while we wait for next year. She’s been sharing videos of the ducks with friends and neighbors. As for me, I’d happily welcome this kind of yearly aptitude test. 

[For a video I put together of the adventure, see below!]

What the Duck?!

“I think it’s a duck,” my mother said.

It was brown, she went on, and there wasn’t a beak, but a bill. It was a duck.

This belief was instantly shot down for its general absurdity. Why would there be a duck nesting in a bush on our rooftop? It had to be a mistake, we said, you just saw it wrong. Don’t ducks hang out near water, anyway? It was probably a pigeon, or one of the turtle doves that are all over our neighborhood. Or some other drab looking bird. Certainly not a duck.

The most recent event to come crashing through my life was precipitated by my dog, who had suddenly insisted on staring at the end of one of the planters situated on the roof. Our rooftop is an area where our dogs, past and present, have been able to run around, and where we hang laundry to dry. Our first dog would slide under the fencing enclosing the rooftop and jump up on the roof’s ledge for the full aerial view of his domain. He eventually launched himself off the edge chasing a crow. Fortunately, he landed in a flower bed about a story and a half down and was fine; we set up cinder blocks underneath the fencing to prevent him from ever gaining access to free fall again.

Those cinder blocks have since become homes to the occasional gecko. Despite my present dog’s general fear of most moving things, she enjoys pressing her nose up to the crevices between the cinder blocks where geckos have taken shelter from the elements. Once she finds a resident gecko, she’ll check up on it at every opportunity.

So when she expressed intense interest at a particular area of our rooftop, whining and sniffing, my mother assumed it was another gecko. She lifted up the dog to show her there was nothing of interest in the planter. Instead, my dog attempted to lunge at something in the bushes that turned to peer towards my mother.

It wasn’t a gecko. It was, we later confirmed, a duck.

This has complicated the general uneventful nature of my life. While the rooftop choice was a wise one in terms of avoiding stray cats and palm-faced civets, the unfortunate timing of having our hedges cut back meant that the duck became more exposed than it should have been. We worried about crows finding it. There’s also the ticking timebomb of ducklings who are somehow supposed to jump down three stories, not die, then walk towards the nearest river without getting run over or picked off by crows. That then presents a moral question: do we stop traffic and ensure the ducklings’ safe return to the river, or do we let nature take its course and allow everything between our house and the nearest body of water decimate the entire brood?

These are all questions and issues I wasn’t ready to voluntarily spend my time thinking about. Nor was the rest of my family. My father told me that he hoped everything worked out for the duck. My mother told me she was too busy to deal with it. Besides, didn’t the duck think things through before making a nest on a rooftop? It must have a plan, right?

Ironically, it was my mother who discovered crows lurking around the nest, quietly plotting death. She texted me with surprising speed.  

When I say “crows,” you might imagine the typical black birds, larger than a pigeon but smaller than a hawk, that might be found near the occasional trashcan or in a Hitchcock film. In Japan, that word refers to a bird the size of a raven that looks like it’s been supersized with steroids. If normal crows were your average human, Japanese crows are Ronnie Coleman. There are stories of Japanese crows dropping kittens on train tracks to kill them, plucking small animals out of zoo enclosures, and snatching food from pedestrians. They’re smart, aggressive, and from what they’ve buried in our planters, particularly enjoy fatty Chinese food.

With the crows fleeing the scene but calling in reinforcements from a neighboring rooftop, we decided to put together a protective guard around the nest. If only to avoid discovering a murdered mallard on her rooftop, my mother came up with the idea of tying two small wire trellises together, then attaching plastic spiked mats made to prevent stray cats from using our yard as a giant toilet, as a further crow deterrent.

Predictably, the duck fled once we placed the contraption over her nest, bursting out of the hedge and quacking in angry distress. It paced around the rooftop as we tried to secure the trellis in place on both sides, my mother telling it that we’d be done soon and asking it not to be upset. It ejected a stream of putrid poop and flew off.

If you’ve never smelled wild mallard poop before, I advise you never to seek the opportunity. What came out of that duck smelled like a mixture of rotten sewage, fish that went bad about a year ago, and wild animal sweat. Even after we hosed down the area, went inside, and vigorously washed our hands, the smell seemed to cling to the insides of our nostrils and our clothes. No wonder my dog found that duck.

I suspect that, at that point, my mother was hoping that it wouldn’t come back. About forty minutes later, I found the duck standing in front of our newly built structure, eyeing it with suspicion and resentment. When I peeked at the planter about twenty minutes later, the duck was securely situated on top of her eggs. She turned and gave me the stink eye.

“You ingrate,” I said as I scanned the sky, rooftops, and telephone lines for any avicidal shadows.

For the present, she seemed safe. If she doesn’t get eaten, Google tells me her eggs will hatch in 30 days. That buys me a month to build a couple crash pads, a ramp, and possibly a sign so I don’t get run over along with the ducks.

Wish us luck, guys.

Tokyo in a Time of Corona

“Put on a mask before you go out,” my mother insisted, “people are getting punched in the face for not wearing one.”

I paused at the front door, about to argue that punching someone in the face seemed like a good way to get a viral disease, or least a bad bacterial infection, and that in the unlikely event that an unusually aggressive Japanese person punched me, that I’d just spit in the person’s face with my mono saliva. Instead, I put on the flimsy mask that was a little too small for me, resulting in large gaps on the sides. I braced myself for the discomfort of feeling my breath condense onto my face for the next few hours.

Tokyo has been a strange place recently, made even stranger by the global panic that hadn’t seemed to affect this particularly densely populated city until approximately 48 hours ago. While entire countries went on lockdown, Japan seemed to be doing what Japan does best: pretending that what’s actually happening, isn’t. That’s not to say nothing changed: cafes and stores were emptier on weekends, my local grocery store now has a limit per person on certain products, and bakeries started to individual wrap their breads and pastries. This raised the question of how many people’s saliva I had been consuming with my chocolate croissants until this point in time.

Yet, while Covid-19 ravaged the rest of the world, Japan’s number of cases had stayed at suspiciously low numbers, most likely due to the delusionary dreams of holding the Olympics sometime in 2020. Once that dream was finally killed off by Norway, Canada, New Zealand, and the fact that large numbers of people around the world were dying, a measured panic has ensued. We have currently been advised by the mayor of Tokyo to try to stay in this weekend.

It’s stupid. It’s stupid and frustrating that the politics and projected financial loss of the Olympics has discouraged a policy of more stringent social distancing here in Japan. Even with the large number of seniors that make up the Japanese population, bars, restaurants, and gyms remain open and people commute to work in crowded trains as usual. They just have more masks on now.

It’s also scary, made more frightening by the fact that governments are not incentivized to be transparent with information about the spread of the disease. But if the grocery store shelves becoming bare the night of the mayoral weekend semi-lockdown announcement are any indication, it seems people are concerned, and that’s comforting. Because we all should be a little more worried than they tell us to be.

Working virtually means my daytime routine hasn’t changed much; but as I live with my relatively elderly parents, one which has a lung condition, I’ve stopped going to the gym and have been refraining from regular social interaction since I survived mono. A week or so ago, caving to the basic human need to interact with someone not my parents, it resulted in a fit of first-world isolation anxiety. I began to ruminate on how deep my depression could go in these Covid-19 times and preemptively panicked because there was no way calculate the time I had left until my sanity unraveled. Would it be weeks, or days? I wondered. I half-heartedly started to flip through one of the piles of used, cut-up magazines on my floor with the hope of retiring a few to the recycling bin. An image caught my eye and brought back fond memories. The background blur of an ad sparked an idea.

The thing that’s easy to forget is that isolation doesn’t put your life on hold. It doesn’t make you any less expressive or creative; instead, it provides the unexpected gift of more time. It’s a time to create, learn a new skill, take online classes, or simply find a hobby. Because based on age and pre-existing medical conditions, even if chances are you low you won’t die from Covid-19 if you go out, you might spread it, and ultimately, someone else might.

So be safe everyone, and kind, and remember to wash those hands

Remembering to Forget with Adam Hansen

“I don’t remember the negative parts of a relationship,” he said.

“Aren’t we supposed to remember stuff that hurts us?”

He looked at me.

“Like, for human survival?”

I searched his face for affirmation as I imagined some ancient version of him attempting to survive in the wilderness: repeatedly running through thorn bushes, trying to touch fire, getting nearly stomped to death by a mammoth. I sighed and looked at him, his face by then overtaken by a big, bright smile, apparently oblivious to the pain of past heartbreak.

Normally, I’d suggest therapy for the self-flagellation, but I suspect it’s what makes him a world-record-holding, WorldTour cyclist. I shook my head in exasperation and took another bite of one of Adam’s sweet potato wedges: crispy sheaths of gooey potato served with a generous sprinkle of lavender salt. It was June and we were at Elle Café, where there is an entire page of vegan nibbles, snacking on those fries before diving into tall glasses full of mango and melon and soy whipped cream. We’d just finished off bowls of vegan ramen at Afuri.

To be fair, Adam suffers from the kind of generosity and masochism that has lost wars. It’s most likely benefited him as a super domestique but has also meant that he has remained – certainly to his detriment – a close friend throughout my multiple meltdowns. His phone has been the recipient of all of my life dramas: family feuds, heartbreak, underemployment. Over the years, I’ve sent book-length emails weeping over people I’d largely forget by the time I saw Adam next, been the sole member of the entourage who tags along to professional engagements as if I belong there, and once got so mad I called him a shithead. He still messages me to tell me he’s in town, makes time to catch up in person, and passes on all the pro peloton gossip.

It’s conduct worthy of a Purple Heart – or whatever the Australian equivalent is (a lifetime supply of ANZAC cookies?) – and was most recently repeated a few weeks ago. He was in town for work related to Leomo; I was nursing the sting of a failed non-relationship. The timing, for me, was perfect.

Over almost-scone-like vegan pancakes at Ain Soph. Ginza, vegan burgers and tiramisu at Ain Soph Ripple, and cups of coffee consumed around the city, Adam told me about the usual: plans for next season and overextending himself by taking on way too much in his brief off-season. In return, I related my most recent misadventures as a super domestique of life: bending over backwards to try to make relationships work and the unfortunate realization of being the only person doing CPR on dying conversations on Tinder.

It’s not like life couldn’t be worse; I can think of several ways, off the top of my head, how it could be. But it’s not exactly made better by my tendency to bring a deliberately honed capacity to endure pain and bullshit for extended periods of time from a sport I used to love into every other area of my life. Unfortunately, I have discovered that there is no tangible reward or cardiovascular benefit to blowing myself up for someone else, lending a wheel when I don’t have to, and falling on swords. It’s actually just exhausting.

“Adam,” I’d said over those pancakes, “I’m tired.”

As the only cyclist to have completed 20 Grand Tours in a row, and one prone to play domestique on and off the bike, I’ve often asked Adam’s phone how he keeps going. He’s never really given a clear answer other than vague encouragement to be more positive. This doesn’t answer my question, I’d thought, but assumed that it was due to some misunderstanding, on his end, of course, from spending too much time in an eastern European country where the English language is apparently scarce.

It never dawned on me that he simply forgot about all the bad stuff. When he divulged this information to me back in June, I was appalled and concerned. Voluntary, selective memory loss seems like a terrible way to avoid future hurt and heartbreak. In fact, that is absolutely the kind of altruism that has led to my texting exes and watching my emotional well-being burn to the ground with the match in my hand.

In the intervening months, I’ve realized that what Adam was referring to wasn’t the stupidity to repeat past mistakes but rather the indefatigable conviction that someone else’s emotional turmoil – and the pain that may have caused him – weren’t going to affect his future choices. It’s a weird yet refreshing optimism that can be misconstrued as naïve or foolish, but in practice requires the healthy ability to remain open and vulnerable no matter how bad the prognosis for lasting love may be.

“So how do you not go back to some awful ex?” I’d asked, just as food was served and our conversation moved on to more important things like vegan omelets. I answered my own question later on, when Adam pressed me to message a super cute Australian guy who had started following me a few months prior.  

“He looks like he’s in his mid-twenties,” I’d said.

“Just message him,” Adam had said, “I dated a girl who was ten years younger than me once.”

“Yeah,” I’d said, “and if you forgot what that was like, let me remind you because I remember.”

He laughed a little and I rolled my eyes again. But I suppose that’s the secret: to choose friends who will remember your heartbreak so you don’t have to, and to hope that when the time comes, they’ll keep you from running into thorn bushes, touching fire, or torching yourself with an ex.