Life in the land of the metric system — Passing them by at 35 mph

Okinawa is different from the United States for many reasons, but one of the first things that visitors will first notice is that in Okinawa they drive on the wrong...er...um...I mean, the left side of the road. That means the driver sits on the right side of the car and most of your vehicle controls are reversed. It’s easy to spot a new driver on Okinawa because every time they make a turn, the windshield wipers come on. I must admit that after months of driving on island, when I’m on autopilot and not really thinking about driving, I will still flip on my wipers when trying to use my turn signal. One of the other major but less obvious differences is that Okinawa operates on the metric system. It is less obvious because unlike most American automobiles, that have both miles per hour (mph) and kilometers per hour (kph) displayed on the the speedometers, most cars in Okinawa only show kph. Since all of the seed limits and speedometers both use kph, I hadn’t really thought about the conversion.

While driving back from Kadena AFB to Camp Kinser, where I live, I realized that there are major implications to using the metric system. I had just completed my Sunday ritual of going to Kadena to get coffee and a haircut. As I was getting ready to leave base I remembered that I had my handheld Garmin GPS with me. During the week, some of the guys I work with had been talking about the distances between the bases here, so I decided to use my GPS find the actual distance. I turned on my GPS and pulled up the dashboard page. This screen on the GPS displays the standard information that you would see on your car dashboard such as speedometer and odometer.

Okinawa’s main highway, 58, has a speed limit that varies between 50 and 60 kph. I’m not a big fan of speeding, but the traffic on Okinawa is so bad that when I see open road, I normally take advantage of it. The stretch of highway between Kadena and Kinser is three lanes in each direction with the right most lane being the fast lane. Like normal, I was in the right lane and was quickly passing the traffic in the two lanes to my left. I was in the 50 kph zone and when I looked down at my speedometer and saw that I was going 55 kph. Most drivers on Okinawa routinely drive at speed slower than the posted limit, so it didn’t really surprise me that I was quickly buzzing by the other cars despite the face that I was only speeding by 5 kph. I then looked down at my GPS and was shocked when I saw that I was only going 35 miles per hour. I instantly went from feeling like I was flying past the other traffic, to feeling like I was creeping along in the fast lane. For the rest of the drive, I kept glancing at the GPS and was continuously depressed by my the speed my GPS was showing.

Another feature of the GPS is that it computes my average speed over the course of a trip. By the time I reached my barracks my average moving speed was less than 30 mph and my total average speed (factoring in time stopped at red lights) was less than 22 mph.

Later I looked at the data from my GPS and realized that it is 6 miles from Camp Kinser, where I live, to Camp Foster, where the dive shop is located. On several occasions I went to the dive shop for evening classes after work. Thanks to the traffic, that six mile drive has taken me over an hour to complete. That means that I was averaging 6 miles per hour! Additionally shocking, was when I thought about kph to mph conversion and realized that the 20 kph school zone on base is actually a 12 mph zone.

Despite the ridiculously slow speed limits, most drivers here are utterly incapable of driving as fast as the posted limit. What Okinawa really needs, is a minimum speed limit and traffic cops that will enforce it. I can’t wait to return to the states and leave the land of the metric system behind.

Japanese speed limit sign