Monday, November 10, 2008

My car bling

I was trying to explain the decorations I have on the back of my car to a friend, and found that there's not nearly enough pictures on the internet, so I'm adding to it.

First off, here's the back of my car:

Explanation: In Japan, they have stickers or magnets available in stores for people to purchase. I chose to buy magnets so that I could remove them if I wanted. The one on the left (the green and yellow sticker) indicates that the person driving the vehicle is an inexperienced driver. It's basically the Japanese equivalent of a "student driver" sign. The sticker on the right tells the other drivers that the person driving the car is elderly.

People were very considerate in general in Japan, but I noticed that people with either sticker in their car were given an extra wide berth and consideration.

So, this is my idea of a joke. The idea of a really, really old person deciding to learn to drive strikes me as a very scary idea. I know that most older people are very excellent drivers. They tend to be more cautious and cool headed than their younger counterparts. Unfortunately, there does come a time when a person needs to hang up their car keys. I promise that I am not prejudiced against the elderly, or elderly drivers. I just thought it would be kind of funny, conceptually. Unfortunately, very, very few people "get" the joke, since they don't know what those stickers symbolize.

For the record, I did not have either of these on my car in Japan. I figured it was scary enough for the Japanese people to see a gaijing (foreigner) driving on their roads, no need to terrorize them more with these stickers on my car!

2 comments:

Christine said...

Ha ha! As soon as I saw the picture I burst out laughing! I've certainly seen those symbols often enough, but never together! Sadly, a very very small percentage of the general driving population will know quite how funny you are.

Kristen said...

Your sense of humor has always made me laugh! I really think that we should have these over her and maybe we wouldn't have all of the road rage because people would be more understanding. I want one that means "kids on board making their mother crazy so please get out of the way so we can get home as fast as we can"