Baby You Can Drive My Car

Driving in Japan has been...interesting.  The cars are smaller, roads are narrower and cars drive on the left-hand side of the road.  It's definitely been an ongoing brain challenge with the whole left side of the road thing because everything is flipped.  Not only is the steering wheel and controls on the right side of the car instead of the left but the turn signal indicator and windshield wipers are flipped.  The first few weeks I was always turning on the wipers instead of the turn signal.  I was always reaching over my left shoulder instead of my right shoulder to grab the seat belt.  And still, two months later, I still walk or at least think about walking to get in on the left side of the car instead of the right.  Physically driving on the left side of the road is actually not that hard; it's all the other parts of the equation.  It's definitely a mental work-out.  The good thing is that the speed limit in Japan is lower.  The highest speed limit I've encountered is 70 kph (43.5 mph).  Trust me, it feels fast enough.  Japanese laws are so strict I do not dare drive over the speed limit.  The speed limit here in our Hario housing area is 20 kph.  Matt feels like he can walk faster and he's probably right--that's only 12 mph.

The cars out here are all Japanese--Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Subaru, etc.  I've seen two Mercedes and one BMW.  Not a single American-made car.  I am surprised I've only seen a handful of hybrids.  Gas here on base was $3.98/gallon when I filled up last week but out in town it is about 147 yen/liter which translates roughly to about $7.52/gallon.

Everyone here drives a used car, at least the military people.  You just buy one when you get here from someone who is moving somewhere else.  Matt wanted to get a car before the kids and I arrived so he ended up buying a 1994 Toyota Windom.  It looked like a Camry and Matt said he had heard a Windom was comparable to a low-end Lexus.  I'm sure 18 years ago it was a pretty sweet ride and, for a car that old, the body and the interior were remarkably well-kept.

Not too shabby for a '94.

Steering wheel on the right.

Unfortunately, not long into the summer, the air conditioning started to work whenever it felt like it and other weird electrical things like the sound of the door locking and unlocking kept happening.  Matt wanted to get a new car but I was reticent because the car was cheap and paid for and I liked not having a car payment.  Also, he was soon leaving and I didn't want to deal with buying, registering and selling a car by myself.  I will say a black car with black interior and no sun shade gets really hot in the summer here in Japan.  The game-changer was we were now in August and our JCI was due at the end of November.

JCI is the Japanese Cumpulsory Insurance.  You have to have it in addition to your liability insurance.  The liability insurance is reasonable and you renew it every year theough a tiny little office on base.  The JCI is renewable every 1-2 years, depending on the age of the car and it involves getting your car inspected.  This is not the $30 15-minute emissions test.  It is a full-on inspection and you have to correct any problems so you can renew the JCI.  We already knew the left front tire was coming to the end-of-life and now we were experiencing the electrical problems.  I had to ask myself, "Do I want to pay possibly $500 in repairs/fees for a car that only cost $1800 and maybe have to go through the same thing the following year?"  It was time to fish or cut bait.  I was explaining all of this to my Dad and when he said, without hesitation, that I should buy a more reliable car well, that was it.  (Matt was a little put out that he had been suggesting us getting a new car for more than a month and then it just took one conversation with my Dad to make me change my mind.  I explained to him that my Dad does not spend money easily so when he was so quick to say he agreed with Matt then I got onboard with the plan.)  The rest was serendipity.  That very next day we (Leah, Aaron and I) were walking to the Post Office, taking the very same route we took every day when we saw a car for sale.  It was a 2001 Toyota Fun Wagon.  (All the cars here, despite their ages, have low mileage.  Japan is a group of islands closely the same size as California if you pushed all the islands together.  Now picture only being able to have roads on 20% of CA because of mountains.  So roads here are narrow and cars are small.  Gas is expensive and the tolls on the roads get very expensive.) 

The Fun Wagon, or the Blueberry, as the kids and I have named it (it's small and blue), was owned by a teacher at Leah's school who was being transferred back to the US.  That same day I called, test-drove it and put a deposit on it.  The owner was keeping it until the end of August but that was OK because I still had our Windom.  I got the Blueberry and junked the Windom the same week that school and soccer started as well as our HHG arrived.  Needless to say that was a rough week.  After driving the Blueberry, though, I realized how much more comfortable I felt driving it.

Oh, what a feeling!

The Blueberry, while smaller, reminds me a lot like my old Toyota Rav4.  It has a lot of the same features like the back (hatch) door opening like a door (as opposed to opening up) and the back seats can fold down or be removed.  It even has a keyless remote fob which Matt and I totally took for granted until we had our Windom and it didn't have one.  The car does show signs of its age as the radio has a CD player and a cassette tape player.  Cassette tapes!  Our Windom had an after-market car audio system with 6 CD-changer and MP3 input.  Probably cost as much as the car....  Still, I figured out that the Blueberry gets 51 km/gal (about 32 mpg) so that's good and it easily carries me & the kids and a huge bag of soccer balls.  Most importantly, the AC works (and we now have a sunshade)!  We'll have to see what Matt thinks when he gets home--he's only seen pictures!