Day O' Fail, kind of
I started out the day attempting to renew my visa, only to learn that there was a piece of paperwork that my place of work needed to fill out—which they hadn’t. They figured just the quick note saying “Dear Immigration, Dave still works for us, so please let him do so, love $ORKPLACE” would suffice. Immigration disagreed.
I’d taken the entire day off—the morning to take care of immigration paperwork and the afternoon to go to the dentist. I went to the dentist and got properly dented (that new tooth is quite nice, thanks).
Unfortunately my bike also got dented, but not nearly as badly as the car that ran into it did. I was pulling up to a red light at one of the crazier intersections in Tokyo and the car pulling up behind me didn’t see the light. BAM! I was knocked about a foot to the right.
The car’s driver was very nice about it, because he knew he was 100% in the wrong—the light was red, after all, and I was stopping, because that’s what you do at a red light. He was trying to beat it, which is precisely what you don’t do. He ended with the bumper of his car stove in quite impressively—and the only damage the bike suffered was a bent license plate and a couple of scuffs on the transmission case. Congratulations to Aprilia for making such a sturdy bike! I wasn’t even knocked off it by the impact.
We exchanged names, phone numbers and addresses, and he told me that if there was anything that needed fixing on it, to call him and he’d arrange for it to be paid for. Impressively enough, even though he hit me directly in front of a police box, no policemen seemed to notice.
It turns out that the bike is just fine, though—I didn’t even notice any difference in the way it drove at all. I’m quite impressed at the amount of damage to the car, though—I guess when they make cars with crumple zones, they take it seriously these days. Bike 1, car 0.