An Expensive Gust of Wind

Lately the weather has been a little strange. It was really warm this weekend so I had my windows open and I could read in my tatami room with a nice warm breeze and sunshine. It was great! Then on Monday it got really windy and they had to stop the local trains for about an hour because it was too windy to run them! On Tuesday it was less windy in the morning but the ocean waves were very strong and the whitecaps made the ocean have a beautiful shine. Today (Wednesday) it snowed and the plum trees, already in full bloom, are covered in a layer of frost that will probably be damaging.

The weather is not just a little strange, but also expensive... for me that is! (And perhaps for the plum farmers as well...) The unlucky but amusing story goes like this. On Tuesday I went to one of my elementary schools and parked next to one of the other teacher’s cars. As I opened my door, a huge gust of wind blew it open suddenly and it hit the car next to me, making a big “thud” sound. At first, when inspecting the damage, I thought it was just a little paint lost, but then I realized it made a pretty impressive dent in her car. Of course, as it always is in these situations, there was no damage to my car. “Oops,” I thought. “I’d better tell her and perhaps offer her some money... can’t be more than 100 dollars to smooth the dent out again, right?” So after the teacher’s meeting I informed the teacher about the dent. She was very nice about it, and I showed the school my insurance information, but we thought it’d be cheaper to fix without insurance. Later, someone came and assessed the damage, and the teacher in charge of the English education informed me that it would cost 500 to 600 dollars to fix! A gust of wind cost me 600 dollars!? (Note: my car cost less than this.) I’m not sure why the damage is so expensive, but Paul mentioned maybe they need to replace a whole part to fix the damage, not just pound it out. So I went on the rest of the afternoon wondering how to afford such an expensive repair.

Luckily, I found out later that I can cover it with my insurance, and it will only go up 100 dollars next year. Phew! That was a close call. Sure, a hundred dollar gust of wind is a pricey gust of wind, but I’ll take it easily over the actual cost of the repair! So now I can laugh at the situation, being no one was hurt and the teacher’s car can get repaired without a big problem for her or me. It’s just one of those things that happen in life.