Hit and Run

Yesterday while in town I had to pick something up in a local office in the middle of downtown Hamamatsu. There was no street parking and my wife and I didn't really want to pay 700yen for 5 minutes of parking so we pulled over to the side walk and put our hazards on. I ran into the office and on the way out I saw my wife in somewhat of a panicked look waving for me to hurry and come over. When I got there she notified me that someone just ran into the back of our car and took off. What the driver apparently didn't know is that my wife was in the car at the time. The windows are tinted and it's hard to see inside. The driver noticing that the hazard lights were on probably made the mistake of thinking there was no one inside. Luckily my wife got the license plate number and type of car so we went looking for him. After less than 5 minutes we spotted the car parked on the side of the road. I waited there while my wife went to the local Koban (police box) to notify the police. As I was waiting the guy (a bout 40 years old) came to the car with a young girl. I immediately walked up and confronted him in my mediocre Japanese. He did not seem that surprised. He tried to say that he did not know, but there is no way by force of the bump, that he couldn't have known. Needless to say I got all of his information off his license. Just as he was getting ready to leave, my wife arrived and he apologized again and left. The police then came and we notified them what had happened and they took down all the info. The policeman said, "Hit and run is wrong and that his own mother had the same thing happen to her" and that he would make sure that this guy contacts us. Well sure enough we get a call from guy that night again apologizing and asking to come over and apologize in person (a common formality in Japan regarding somewhat serious mistakes). The next morning he came over with a fruit basket and a wad of cash (sorry money to cover our troubles and waste of time) and said sorry again and to just let him know of the damages and he would pay. We were of course content with this resolution. There was an interesting twist though. Apparently the guy was a professor at Hamamatsu University. That cops notified us of this. You see in Japan when someone does something bad and it is known where they work, often times their office is notified of the problem and the individual involved is sometimes held accountable. I don't know how common this is now days but I think it is still a common practice. After he realized that we were aware of where he worked, his whole demeanor changed. He became very caring, and concerned. My wife is ok though and the car is getting fixed so it turned out pretty good under the circumstances.