About a month ago, I was biking back from Japanese class with a couple who also lived in Maebashi. They told me that I was going to get hit by a car. It’s inevitable. I’d seen an accident and a near accident already. A man had gotten knocked off his motorbike by a truck just before I passed by in my car. The very rear of a woman’s bike had gotten clipped as I walked to the store at another time. “Everyone we know, except me, has gotten hit,” the man said. “I got hit but it wasn’t bad. I managed to jump off my bike before the car got me,” the woman told me. As they eyed my expensive, shiny, new mountain bike, they told me how their friend had lost her teeth in an accident, another was hospitalized and his bike destroyed. It might not be worth it to have a nice bike. When the car gets you, it will get your bike too. (more…)