On my planet, the United States, used car salesmen have a classic line for selling a car with low mileage: "This car was driven by a little old lady who only used it to drive to the grocery store." In Japan, if I ever get rid of my lightweight pickup truck, the salesman will say, "This truck was driven by a lady who lived on a small island and only used it to drive to the bar." And he'd be right. I am not implying that I drive intoxicated -- I only drive my truck to the bar. I always walk home.

Although the distance from my house to San-chan's Bar & Restaurant is only 1 km, and I don't have to worry about oncoming traffic (since the chance that two of us on the island would be driving at the same time is practically nil), the narrow road, with mountain on one side and sea on the other, leaves no room for error. If my truck ran off the road, no one would notice until low tide.

Sections of this road have no guard rail. This is simply because no one has driven off the road there yet. The system has always been that as soon as someone drives their vehicle or bicycle off the road and into the sea, a guardrail goes up in that spot. Most islanders seem to be perfectly comfortable with this system, and those who are not walk.