Do you remember when I mentioned that at the start of April the Japanese government cut fuel taxes so petrol became cheaper? Well, that lasted a whole month. At the end of April, a group of politicians pushed through another bill which reinstated the tax, as well as adding a little bit more to it. This means two things: 1) petrol prices are higher than ever and 2) I am not a very happy chappy.

The issue of fuel taxes comes down to one major argument, whether or not the money that is collected through the fuel taxes is being used appropriately. The money raised from the taxes is supposed to be used to repair roads, build new roads, build tunnels, improve driving conditions and other similar tasks. The people who support the tax claim that the government's ability to repair roads, build roads etc. relies almost solely on the fuel tax. Without the tax, roads won't be repaired, new roads won't be built and current construction projects won't be finished. The opponents argument is that all this money that is being collected is not being used appropriately. They argue that unnecessary roadwork is being done simply to make use of the money that has been collected.

I can understand both sides of the argument, but as I drive around (which I do a lot) I can't help but notice that a lot of money IS wasted on unnecessary roadworks. I've driven all over Japan and one thing I have noticed is the incredible amount of roads that go nowhere. All over the country, there are thousands and thousands of lovely, perfectly smooth roads that go for a couple of hundred meters then stop in the middle of nowhere. I found one road near my town that would be an absolute treat for drag racing. It is in the middle of the mountains, in an area that has no farms, houses, shops or buildings. It is about as remote as you can get in Japan. At each end of this road is about 7 or 8 kms of winding dirt tracks, which often deteriorate into something resembling a goat path. The road is closed for six months of the year when the snow makes it inaccessible. There is absolutely no purpose for the road, no reason to drive down there other than to 'see what's there'. Yet, for some reason, there is a perfectly straight untouched strip of bitchumen about 3 kms long right in the middle of all this. I was amazed when I found it. After driving slowly along this winding dirt track in the middle of a forest, I suddenly broke though the canopy of trees and it was there. My own personal drag strip, in the middle of nowhere, with no people for 20kms in any direction.

The issue also gets a lot of TV airtime. When the tax was cut, some people who live near a tunnel construction site were interviewed. The tunnel was 85% complete, but now that the tax had been cut the construction had stopped indefinitely. Then the tax was reinstated. There was a show about the numerous toll roads in Hokkaido that were built at great expense but are almost never used - the tolls are too high, the speed limits too low and they usually travel alongside regular free roads. The turning point for me was a story on a town further south in Japan. A number of years ago, a freeway was built through this town. The new freeway passed between a local neighbourhood and an unpopulated mountain. A couple of bridges were built across the freeway so that the locals could still access the mountain if they wanted to. A handful of locals (about half a dozen, I think) complained that they didn't want to walk walk 500m down the road to cross the bridge that accessed the mountain when they wanted to go pick mountain vegetables. They wanted to be able to walk out the front of their house and have direct access to the mountain. So the government built a new series of bridges across the freeway at 100m intervals, just so everyone was happy. Well, it turns out that not everyone was happy after finding out how much it cost. I can't remember the exact figure, but it was many tens of millions of dollars. Maybe even in the hundreds of millions. Just so half a dozen people didn't have to walk an extra 500m on the rare days they went foraging for vegetables in the mountains. This is where my petrol tax dollars go, and that's why I'm not a happy chappy.