ETC

Whether you're first-time visitor to Japan or a frequent flyer to Narita Airport, you can often be caught by surprise. There's an unmistakably wide range of etiquette. Shoes on stone, socks on wood. Onsen tidbits. Do's and don'ts on public transport. Japanese toilets for dummies. The list goes on and on.

The peculiarity of Japan has been a favourite topic of Western observers. I kept laughing when I read the book Abroad in Japan, written by Chris Broad. Chris is a British filmmaker and YouTuber who started his nerve-racking job teaching English in a foreign country without any knowledge of Japanese. 

His six-hour drive road trip to meet snow monkeys reminded me of our puzzle with the toll payment system few years ago. Both Chris and I didn't know their electronic chip system called ETC. That card, once inserted in the onboard unit inside the car, allows wireless toll payment along most of Japan's expressways and highways. Similar to Chris, we were trapped as my wife pulled up to a tollbooth with no means to pay with cash. We poked our head out of the window, flashed our credit card and kept failing to pay, We didn't understand any single sentence of what the Japanese toll booth operator was talking about.

The line of cars pulling up behind us could have been longer than those behind Chris. Anyhow, the long line of traffic ended up pushing both our family and Chris to drive throttle down the motorway without paying the toll. 

Like Chris, I will never forget the flame burning on the head of the toll-booth man who stood in a cloud of exhaust fumes.