Dave Brown

Wow

My bank balance is now significantly higher than my remaining student loan!

So should I pay the leftover student loan off all in one go, or let it fizzle out and keep my credit rating alive a bit longer?

A dose of schadenfreude to make my morning

Today I pulled up at the Jingu-mae intersection on Meiji-Dori (it’s in Harajuku—Kiddy-Land is on one corner, and Condomania is on the opposite corner, and I guess they exist in direct and bitter opposition with each other). I had a red light, so I settled in to wait for it, pausing only to curse at the van driver to my left who had done an amazing job of swerving around without so much as touching his turn signals, so that he could get to the front of the line.

The light going the opposite way turned yellow; then red. Just as it was turning red, a series of little red and white trucks decided they were going to make their right-hand turn. First one truck turn, just as the light was turning red; then the next truck went right shortly after the right turned red and just as my light was turning green. Then, finally, a third truck went roaring into the intersection.

At this point, he must have been intimidated by the combination of the minivan next to me, and my terrifying motorbike, because he decided that, on the balance, it would probably be better if he stopped, even though he was a good third of the way into his turn—he wasn’t entirely in the cross-traffic’s way just yet, even though the truck was well over the line he should have stopped behind if he were actually paying attention to the rules of the road.

He didn’t notice that there was a cop that was just chilling by the side of the road, unfortunately. So when he stopped, she casually strolled over, clipboard in hand, and wrote him a ticket. And he was also treated to the spectacle of a foreigner on a motorcycle putting slowly past his nose, not able to drive as fast as usual because he was doubled over with laughter.