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.

Last Wednesday I was really tired. I thought maybe it had something to do with a lack of exercise, so I roused all of my will and decided to bike to my Japanese class.

I hadn’t gone 15 minutes before I got hit by a car. I was riding in the bike lane, approaching a 7 Eleven. A girl in a boxy black yellow plate car stopped at the parking lot exit and I figured she was going to let me pass. But she was watching the car traffic, looking for an opportunity to pull out into the road. She never saw me in the bike lane. As I came in front of her, she moved forward.

The impact itself wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t going too fast and she had just been stopped. I think she hit the right back of the bike because I toppled off my bike onto my right elbow, right knee, and the right side of my chest. I was wearing a helmet but my head didn’t hit the ground. I actually did just barely crack the plastic on my helmet, but this was a moment later when I flung my head back in pain.

Relieved that at least I didn’t have any head injuries, I looked around frantically for my bike. It had skid on its side right into traffic. The girl in the car jumped out and ran to me. “Dijobu? Dijobu desu ka?”

I sobbed and wailed in pain and in mourning over my bike, which a car was about to run over. But the incoming car stopped just before my precious got crushed.

“Dijobu? Gomenasai!”

Dijobu? I wasn’t sure if I was ok. My knee hurt powerfully and I wasn’t sure if I could walk. My elbow was burning. They might just have awful bruises. They might be fractured. At this point the pain level was extreme and I didn’t know. I wanted someone to get my bike out of the road. I couldn’t tell the girl this. I don’t even know how to say. “Ouch! My knee!” in Japanese. I just cried.

The girl started crying too. “Gomenasai.” When I saw her face I realized I’d better figure out if I was ok. She looked about my age. She was bowing and weeping and shaking.

A few more people collected. A worker from 7 Eleven. A man in a brown jumpsuit. Another woman.

“Do you speak Japanese? Are you ok?” the woman asked me. I don’t remember if it was in English or Japanese. No, to the speaking Japanese. Am I ok? I sat up and looked at my arm. My elbow was scraped on either side and bleeding, embedded with bits of dirt. I reluctantly moved my pants leg up. I hadn’t shaved my legs in a while, figuring that no one would be seeing them. Even in these times, I can be really self-conscious. My knee was bruising a purple red already and welling blood. I had to hold it bent with my hands; it hurt to stretch it out all the way. “Dijobu?” I reached into my book bag, pulled out my phone and set it to call my friend, Mrs. K. I handed it to the woman.

“Do you speak Japanese? The woman who owns this phone…” I couldn’t understand anything else.

The 7 Eleven worker gave me a towel to wrap my elbow.

With deep chagrin I saw an ambulance roll into the parking lot. They started laying out a stretcher. I probably just needed to dip my wounds in rubbing alcohol, put on some bandages, and lay on the ice.

“Can you walk?” one of the men asked me in English.

I still wasn’t sure, but I’d better figure that out soon if I wanted to avoid the ambulance. The girl was still sobbing.

I stood up. It hurt only a little. I took a step. Still, just a little pain. I moved my knee up and down. Not too bad. I decided there was nothing the hospital could do for me that I couldn’t do myself. Clean, bandage, reduce swelling.

“Dijobu.” I told the girl. She shook her head and cried harder.

I told the ambulance that I would not be coming with them. Mrs. K drove up and assessed the situation talking to the woman, the girl, and the ambulance techs, who were their way out.

The next couple hours were spent with me waiting in Mrs. K’s car while she spoke with police, called my company, answered calls from the insurance company, and reassured the girl who had hit me. The police are called for every accident in Japan, different from the US, where if there’s no significant damage to person or property, the police don’t care. Both the police and my company demanded that I go to the hospital to be checked for serious injury.

I was nervous about dealing with the police. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but in the US I always feel like they’re looking for something to blame me for. These police were a man and a woman. They were pleasant and relaxed. Unlike American police, they were in no hurry. They asked me some oddly precise, how-the-hell-should-I-know questions. “Where were you when you saw the car?” I made a guess and they marked it with chalk. “Which side of the bike lane were you on?” Another guess and another mark with chalk. “How fast were you going?” “Where did the car hit you and the bike?” What? How the hell should I know? I got hit with a car and wasn’t exactly watching. I had to make another guess based on the place of my injuries and the final position of the bike. It was hard to explain because my bike and I landed on the same side that I was hit. They took pictures of my bike. Mrs. K translated as the policewoman asked me questions from a form. She was sitting in the back seat of Mrs. K’s car while we were in the front, with the door closed. Very personable and trusting police.

She asked if I wanted the girl to be penalized in some way. Honestly, I was over it already. I was so relieved to discover that I was ok that I wasn’t even feeling upset about getting hit by a car. I felt worse for the girl than I did for me. I’d much rather get hit by a car (mildly) than hit someone. I’d certainly had some scary near misses in a car when I hadn’t slept the night before or I was distracted by being lost. No. It’s ok. I just want her to pay attention better in the future.

When the police were done, Mrs. K had her husband take my bike while she and I went to the hospital. I wanted to get this hospital thing over with. I had refused the ambulance assuming that I would be able to go home immediately to treat my wounds. Every moment without ice was a moment lost to prevent swelling damage. Every moment without antiseptic was a moment closer to infection. I hadn’t even had a chance to clean the dirt out of my elbow. The ambulance techs had only taped some gauze to my knee and my elbow before they left. And I was a bit worried about one thing. After the pain in my knee and elbow started to dull, I noticed that it hurt to breathe deeply, laugh, or cry. Something was wrong with my chest. It didn’t hurt enough to be a cracked rib, but it was peculiar.

The first hospital only had one doctor working at that time of night. And by that time of night, I mean only around 8pm. This doctor was an internal medicine doctor and wouldn’t be of much help so they sent Mrs. K and me to another place. This hospital seemed older but better equipped.

From my brief and happily limited survey of hospitals in Maebashi, I would say that there are many, but each one is rather small and serves a few patients. This is very unlike the American system where the hospitals are easy to find because they tower above just about every building around, and it’s at least a 15-minute ambulance ride just to get to one. The emergency room (I don’t know what they call it here, or even if there is such a thing as an emergency room.) was quite tiny and there were only about 10 other people waiting with me. Mostly, they were parents with sick, sleeping children. Everyone was calm. No one seemed irritated or anxious. It was not a room full of desperately ill or injured, frantic, furious im-patients who had been waiting for hours. I got called after about half an hour of waiting. The doctor’s English was adequate enough to give me instructions. The staff either had decent English or was able to indicate through motions what I needed to do. Put on this gown. Turn this way for the X-ray. Move your arm like this. The most difficulty I had was when I put on the hospital gown. I left it open in the back like I thought you were supposed to. Apparently, in Japan, you leave it open in the front. Or maybe just for an X-ray you leave it open in the front? I hate hospital gowns.

The X-rays showed no serious damage in my knee, elbow, or chest. The doctor swabbed my elbow and knee with antiseptic and put on band-aids, although my wounds were too large for the band-aids. He had no further instructions. Nothing about ice. Nothing about cleaning or antibiotics. Nothing about antinflamatories. My hospital care was quick, efficient, and unsettlingly minimal.

On my own, I changed the band-aids, kept the wounds clean with alcohol, and took ibuprofen religiously. I couldn’t find antibiotic ointment anywhere, because I don’t know enough Japanese to read the labels. When I asked a clerk at the drugstore “antibiotic?” and made a scraping motion with my arm she gave me another antiseptic. My wounds developed minor infections. My elbow oozed sticky yellow liquid constantly. When took off the band-aids and tried to let it dry, it collected clumps of lint, and hurt unbearably whenever it came in contact with something. When I told my boss at my company that I couldn’t find antibiotic ointment anywhere, he told me to go back to the drugstore and wave my bare, disgusting injury in their face. It totally worked. That time, they found some for me.

My company told me to take two days off from work, Thursday and Friday, to heal. I was so exhausted from pain and stress it was necessary. I don’t think I would have been able to deal with hundreds of elementary schoolers tugging at me when I had a busted knee and shredded elbow.

On Friday the girl who hit me and her parents were coming to Mrs. K’s house to make a formal apology. This made me really anxious. It’s strange to think of parents getting involved in an apology. They may jump in to help when their adult kid is in trouble, but why would they seem to share any sort of responsibility? Of course, the girl probably lives with her parents. It’s not uncommon for Japanese youth, especially women, to live with their parents until they’re married. I was also had the understanding that they were going to give some sort of apology gift, which bothered me even more. Money is a common gift in Japan, especially to make reparations. I can understand offering to help pay for medical bills, but their insurance was already going to reimburse me completely. In fact, their insurance might even pay for the two days of work I missed. Giving money as an apology is completely insulting, according to my personal sense of culture. It suggests that you’re in desperate need of funds or that there’s an exact price on your health. The girl arrived with her father. Her father handed me a box of wrapped store bought cakes (These are not Little Debbie or anything. It’s the Japanese equivalent of a box of chocolates.) and a doll in a little kimono that the girl’s mother had made. A doll?! The box of cakes was fine. Even for my culture, sweets are an appropriate apology gift. But the handmade doll? I hope it wasn’t valuable to them. I hope the girl’s mother makes these things all the time. Even Mrs. K thought it was an odd gift. She said maybe it was because I was a gaijin and they wanted to give me a souvenir.

Wounded on Wednesday. That Saturday my friends were gathering in Tokyo for an allnighter. My scraped knee was healing, but the joint had somehow gotten damaged in the accident and it still hurt to walk. My elbow was seeping and festering. My chest still hurt when I laughed or someone gave me a hug. I went anyway.