Japanese Road Rage

Does it exist? you wonder.

Wonder no longer. The one day I'm in a car here (and probably the only day for a good while yet) we see two unparalleled examples of road rage. I've never seen people this crazy in the US.

First example: we're on the highway (called highway because it's not free, according to our driver, Naoki). We run into a little bit of congestion. Turns out it's because some salaryman-looking guy decided to take the time to stop his car in the middle of the highway, get out, go the car behind him, and start violently kicking the driver side door (we were in the rightmost lane, so he had the wall on the other side of him).

Second example: a small little dispute between a pedestrian and a car that starts to turn into the road the pedestrian is crossing turns nasty when the pedestrian (an old 70+ man) decides to teach the driver a lesson. I don't know whether the pedestrian was abusing his right-of-way or not, but even though the car stopped in time, he slapped the hood violently with his free hand, then walks over to the driver door and begins to argue with the driver. They argument lasts awhile, and they're blocking traffic, so the lady driving the car behind decides to get involved and starts yelling at the pedestrian. He pulls the drivers door open. The lady from the car behind yells some more. The driver, though she apologized at first, seems to now just be trying to reason with him while defending her actions. As we turned away some sort of settlement (to a very good one from the unhappy faces all around) seems to have been reached.

Lastly, and something that I noticed quite quickly, is that cars in Japan tend to be square. Nothing at all like the predominant rounded aesthetic preference in the US.