Episode summary
A story of an experience Tayvin had trying to visit Osaka Castle in Japan — real travel, real English.
T.E.A. Time is hosted by English teacher Tayvin Bayless. Read the full transcript.
Hey there, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. In today’s episode, I want to share a story from my time living in Japan. One of the things that shocked me when I first moved to Japan was how few people own cars. In my hometown in Utah, there is very little public transportation and most things are too far for you to walk or bike. So, right when I turned 16 I bought a car to drive myself around. In Japan, you don’t need a car to get to most places. They have great public transportation and it is very easy to walk or bike to most places that you would need to go in town
A few years ago I was living in the city of Osaka. I was working as a volunteer and living with a friend and coworker. On one cold winter day, we had a break from our work and decided to visit Osaka Castle. Osaka Castle is a very famous Japanese landmark with a long history. Seeing the beautiful architecture, and learning about the historical importance of the castle as we walked through it was very interesting to me. So, I was tremendously excited to visit it in person.
Before we traveled to the castle we needed to get some errands done. We went shopping, talked with our families back in America, and cleaned up the apartment. By the time we finished all of these tasks, it was mid-afternoon. We only had a few hours before the castle closed and they wouldn’t let any more people in to tour. We ran outside and hopped on our bikes. Of course, we strapped on our helmets. Safety is important after all, but then we began zooming down the street as quickly as we could.
Most of the time that we rode our bikes, the two of us would ride on the road with the cars. But, on some roads in Osaka, it is impractical to ride your bike with the cars. We would usually ride very carefully when biking on the sidewalk; it can be hard to predict what pedestrians might do, but we were in a hurry and maybe pedaling faster than we should have. Well, we were about halfway to our destination when we came to a crosswalk. The light was green, so we didn’t slow down. At the same time, coming from the opposite direction were two high school girls riding mamachari. Mamachari is an extremely common type of bike in Japan. The most distinctive feature of a mamachari is probably the basket at the front of the handlebars. The bikes have all different types of baskets attached to them. There are woven baskets, metal baskets, and some even have seats for young children at the handlebars.
As we were crossing the road, one of the girls suddenly turned left, right into my path. I was going too fast to avoid a collision, but I tried my best. Swerving to the right and pulling my brakes hard, I crashed into her on the left side of my bike. My left hand punched into her metal basket, and I flew off of my bike seat and over the top of her head. I don’t remember how I landed on the ground. I was told later that I flipped in the air and rolled a few feet after hitting the ground. I just remember getting up off the ground with the police already at the scene.
After that, we made sure that the girl was all right, talked to the police, and talked to her parents. Luckily the young girl was okay. She was a bit shocked by what had happened but had no physical injuries. “I’m totally fine too! Not a scratch on me…” I said to the officer. But, wait. There seemed to be something strange about my left hand. I was starting to feel a slight throbbing. Midway through my conversation with the policeman, I lifted up my hand to see what was causing that sensation. My middle finger was bent in an unnatural direction and I could see the bone. Just to confirm, I turned to my friend and asked him to touch it. Yep, that seemed to be my bone. I had a compound fracture.
Well, I hope you liked my story. There’s more that happened after that, including refusing to ride in an ambulance, walking around at night to try and find the nearest hospital, and a miraculously speedy recovery. But for now, I think it’s enough to say that we never made it to Osaka Castle. I still haven’t seen the castle even now. Maybe one day I will finally get to see it in person.
If you have any questions or comments send me a message through Anchor, on Twitter, or find me on italki and I’ll try to respond as quickly as possible. If you’d like to read along with the audio of this episode, you can find a link to the transcript in the episode description or on my Twitter page. Until next time. Have a wonderful day.
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