2 Attempts at Bodily Harm Avoided — Narrowly
Today was supposed to be normal day and it pretty much was up until the very end where it sparked with moments of high adrenaline.
My first incident happened at the end of speed skating practice. The coach had his nephew and me lined up ready to toe the blue start line. He was in the middle of wondering if I could match my 1′10″ out loud when suddenly he yelled “あぶない！” (abunai — danger, watch out!) Before I could even turn to look, my feet were swept from under me and I was falling backwards. Luckily for my head, past years of karate practice gave me the reflex to put my chin down as I fall. Double lucky when I looked down to see unknown dude’s skates had barely missed poking me in the ribs. It’s very rare for those kind of accidents to happen on this rink especially with high school students who I almost never see fall, which is good because they go super fast. In the end I thought I got out without a scratch, but as I was getting off the ice and putting away my skates I saw 1.5 cm of the very back of my right skate’s blade had been chipped off 
Coach says it’s not really necessary for skating but I was hoping my $500 investment would last relatively unscathed for a little longer.
To wind down the day I thought I would get some dinner at the local super market, take it home and relax while eating it. Those plans were ruined when I was taking a back alley to get home and slid a little in the curve due to the fact it had become complete ice. Surely you’ve seen in movies and TV shows where cars are able to teeter totter on edge of some steep hill? Well, my car kept sliding until the front left wheel had started down the enbankment and my back right wheel was about 2 feet off the ground. In that moment I didn’t even want to breathe for fear of giving it that last nudge to finish a 3 foot drop into someone’s rice patty. After about 15 minutes of thinking, checking stability, and futilely trying to reverse out, I was able to get out of the car without causing any more trouble. However to make matters worse I hadn’t brought my cell phone with me. So I had to run about 1.5 km to my house, got the phone, and started making calls. Initially I thought maybe there was a chance for two people to get the car out by using one person’s extra weight over the back wheel in the air but after Mehan arrived, we both decided that idea was a little too dangerous.
Luckily about that time my coach friend called me back and after explaining the situation to him in broken Japanese, he was able to get some his friends together with an SUV and tow cable and pulled me out of the ditch. The only thing I can give myself credit for is not over reacting once in the slide and getting my wheels pointed in such a way that I stopped the car from rolling futher down the hill, or worse rolling over laterally down the enbankment. Once pulled back on to solid ground, my car ran fine and it does appear to have any body damage. I’ll have to give a more thorough check once there is light to check it with. Nevertheless tomorrow I will be facing having the piss taken out of me yet again by the office. And now finally at 10:40 pm I get to eat the dinner I initially bought at 8:30