A Lifetime of Exeprience: Overcoming Obstacles

[UberGoober]

It’s tough to go to another country and make friends. Still, somehow, I had managed to do just that and the good news was that they happened to be car guys. The bad news was that it was becoming increasingly obvious that they were full of shit, and starting to piss me off.

By the time I had been teaching English for a few months, I had pretty well set up a whole new life for myself in Japan. Despite the fact that I had to send almost all my take-home pay back to the USA to service the credit card debt and student loans that I had incurred while trying to finish up college, I managed to save just enough to purchase my little CBR250 and have something of a social life.

Dating and motorcycles can be a lot of fun in the right circumstances, but autumn was coming on strong and cool rainy weather was becoming the norm rather than the exception. It was clear that if I hoped to keep going out on dates, I was going to need a mode of transport that offered more protection from the elements.

Looking back, I realize now that I could probably have taken the train or bus just about anywhere I wanted to go and that my girlfriend, coming from a culture where few young men actually owned their own cars, would have thought that these kinds of dates were absolutely normal. Of course, as an American man, the idea of using the bus or train to go on a date was preposterous and so I found myself in the market for a used car.

But Japan isn’t really set up for easy car ownership. In fact, the purchase, registration and inspection process were purposely created to keep people from buying or keeping old cars. There are a lot of stated reasons behind this, but the long and the short of it is this – People with the money to navigate the complex car buying and registration process will have the money to keep their car in good working order, have the money to pay for insurance and have the money to pay for parking. Therefore cars will be safe, insured and not left parked illegally all over the streets. Given the fact that public transportation is readily available wherever you go in Japan anyhow, it makes sense when you think about it.

But a man in love ignores the most logical things, and I knew deep in my heart that if I wanted to keep my girlfriend, I needed a car. Sure, there was a bureaucracy and a ton of rules set up to block me and my ilk from car ownership, but with clueless sincerity I set out to overcome it all.

The first thing I needed was to find a car I wanted but that was easier said than done. It turns out that there are almost no person-to-person car sales in Japan. Sure, if you have a friend who has an old car and you want to buy it you can, but otherwise there are no classified ads and no used cars for sale sitting alongside the road or in people's yards. For whatever reason, the Japanese just do not do that. No, if you want to buy a car, you are virtually forced into going to a dealer and I soon found out something else – all dealers are either in (or are in cahoots with someone in) the car inspection business. And wouldn’t you know, that all the reasonably priced used cars on the various lots around town had the same problem, they needed inspections – expensive inspections.

All cars in Japan need to have inspection stickers. This requirement began after WWII as a way to get old, damaged and otherwise unsafe cars off the road. However, it soon became apparent that there were other "advantages" to this system.

First, to avoid creating a huge new agency devoted to auto inspections, the Japanese government simply licensed repair shops as inspection stations and the mechanics who ran the shops quickly realized, of course, that they had a cash cow on their hands. When acting as an inspector, a mechanic could declare car with a minor defect (a chipped windshield, for example) "unsafe" and fail it on the spot. They could then put on their mechanic hat and recommend that their own shop do the repair work thereby guaranteeing a passing grade on a follow up inspection. It was a great system, the cars on the roads were "safe" and the mechanics enriched - the only one who lost was the consumer.

The Japanese car industry also benefited. As the mechanics got ever greedier and demanded ever larger sums of money for ever sillier repairs, most owners found that once a car got to be five or six years old that it was actually easier to just go out and buy a new one. The economy in Japan was booming in the 70s and 80s and there was money to burn so, people threw away perfectly good cars while the factories churned out a steady stream of new product to replace them.

But it didn't end there. Another industry grew out of the cars that were thrown away. The cleanest examples got shipped off to Russia, Australia or the Caribbean where they were resold for a tidy profit. Less clean or less desirable cars were broken into their component parts which were also shipped overseas and sold at bargain prices through junk yards. Ever see an ad for low mileage used Japanese engines? This is where they come from.

Thanks to this system, it would seem that I was trapped, but like most men on a mission I soon found a work around. There is a thriving foreign community in Japan and in their comings and goings a black market of sorts has developed to serve them. New in town and need a refrigerator or a TV? It turns out someone is leaving and will sell you theirs for a bargain! There is even a version of the want ads, a small monthly news letter called the Kansai Flea Market, and using that I soon found a likely car – a 1986 Toyota Supra Twin Turbo.

(Photo: A 1986 Toyota Twin Turbo Supra - Not mine, but just as nice.)

[UberGoober]

The Supra’s owner was an Australian man married to a Japanese woman. His wife had inherited the car from her uncle a few years before and the young couple had used it without any problems until the birth of their first child. Now driving a brand new Mitsubishi Delica Van, they had decided to go ahead and dump the old Toyota. Save a ridiculous “I’ve been to Saipan” bumper sticker, the car itself was flawless. White with a maroon interior I was smitten the moment I saw it. Fast, reliable and in good shape, it had only one problem – an automatic transmission. Still, as much as I would rather have had a stick shift, at just $600 and with a year remaining on its inspection sticker, it was a bargain. Naturally, I snapped it up.

I was quite proud when I brought my Supra home. Just 13 years old, with only 60K kilos on the clock, it looked like a million bucks. My car-guy friends, however didn’t see it as such a bargain. From day one they tried to pick at every little detail.

“It’s too old to register.” One said.

“When the inspection runs out no shop will pass it without paying a bunch of money to get every little thing fixed.” Said another.

“It’s probably not even safe now.” Said the first guy.

This kind of talk went on and on and eventually some of it got back to my girlfriend Makiko who hit the roof about me buying an old, unsafe junker. “What a waste of money.” She said.

Finally I got mad. “Look,” I said, “I’ve had a drivers license for 16 years. I have driven cars of all kinds and have put hundreds of thousands of miles on them. There is no way that some 22 year old who got his license a couple of years ago knows as much as I do about cars, and there is no way that a Toyota, ANY Toyota with 60 thousand KILOS on the clock is an unreliable piece of crap no matter how old it is. Just because in your country people throw away cars at 5, 6,or 7 years old doesn’t mean they are ready for the junk heap, it just means your country is stupid.”

Of course, that ended a couple of friendships, but since those guys didn’t exactly support me when I needed their help, they were better off gone. And so, I continued to navigate the Japanese legal system on my own. It turns off I was fine without them anyhow.

To register a car in Japan you have to have a parking space. Finding a place turned out to be easy, a nice lot just ¼ mile or so away from my apartment, but proving I actually had the spot required a contract, a map, and a trip to the police station. Of course like most authority figures charged with processing paperwork, the cops in my town didn’t have a lot of time or patience for a foreigner trying to wade through the system. Even though I had the car securely parked off the street, they dilly dallied around long enough that I finally asked one of my English students about my situation, an English student who just happened to be a full Detective Inspector in the Kyoto police department... And would you know it? I had my paperwork approved and my parking sticker in hand the next day.

The following week I went to the license bureau and was handed a bundle of forms to fill out. As I stood there wondering what to do the lady behind the counter pointed out that for 500 Yen (or just $5) the people at the license bureau would complete all the paperwork while I waited. I ponied up the cash, had the pros do all the work and in less than 30 minutes walked out with new plates.

Life was good! I kept my girlfriend and enjoyed the heck out of my Supra. When the inspection needed to be done a year later, a little more investigation turned up the fact that there was a little known do–it-yourself option and I, again with clueless sincerity, went to the inspection station, where I watched a video and got the paperwork.

The inspection, it turned out, was much simpler than the mechanics bothered to tell anyone. The authorities were looking for rust in the underside of the car, checking for various leaks or other drips and drops, checking the emissions and making sure the lights, horn and blinkers worked. The car had no rust I was sure, maybe there were leaks -I didn’t know- but it did have a problem I was well aware of, the fog lights.

On one of my first outings with the car, I had hit a cement parking bumper with my car’s low front spoiler and broken one of the fog lights. The outer glass was fine, but inside there was an amber lens that had broken. The accident left that light white while the other remained amber. I thought about it for a while and then solved this problem easiest way possible, I used a hammer and broke the amber light so it was white too!

I filled out the rest of the paperwork as best I could and one, rainy nasty day, I took my car up to the inspection station – making sure to drive through as many mud puddles as I could to cover up any drips or discoloration on the bottom of the car – and ran it through the line. In less than 20 minutes and for only $100 my car was inspected and had a new 2 year sticker.

I used the car the rest of my time as a teacher in Japan and eventually gave it away just before I left. Sure, it had its occasional problems, but it proved to be a great ride and my girlfriend and I had a lot of fun taking it out into the country for weekend drives. The girl? We celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary last month.

For the most part, things are fine, but some days, I wish I had kept the car instead.

[acalliste]

"your country is stupid!"

You bought a car in a car unfriendly country to keep your girlfriend and then said that?


That same car has been sitting in our garage taking up space, waiting for its turn on the project list for 10 years.

[UberGoober]

Yeah, but is yours right hand drive? If I could have got it home, I could have sold it to any mailman in America!

[acalliste]

Speedy delivery!

Nope, its normal left hand drive. Too bad you couldn't get it over here. Probably would have cost a fortune huh?

[UberGoober]

I asked about shipping it, but the agent was really forthright about it and told me that it would probably need a bunch of modifications to make it street legal. If it had been something really old or exotic it might have been worth it, he said, but realistically it was just an old Toyota and I could go home and buy another for a fraction of the price. He was right.

I ended coming back and buying that 200SX I wrote about earlier. I have to say, it was less powerful and not nearly as nice, but it was 10 times more fun!

[acalliste]

What kind of mods? Would anyone over here even know the difference? Unless you are talking about the location of the driver, but I am pretty sure I've seen right hand drive vehicles over here before...

[UberGoober]

I don't remember everything,but I think there were emissions mods and some DOT glass at the very least. What's more, if you can't get it all done, US Customs will crush it.

[acalliste]

How rude!

[Süsser Tod]

Originally Posted by acalliste

What kind of mods? Would anyone over here even know the difference? Unless you are talking about the location of the driver, but I am pretty sure I've seen right hand drive vehicles over here before...

EPA Emissions stuff, which is not that different from the Japanese stuff, but doesn't have the sticker (it hasn't been tested and approved by the EPA, so even if it does the same thing, it's not legal).

DOT Tail lights, reflectors, headlamps, new fenders/bumpers to install side markers (or some weird retrofit). Also DOT safety stuff, which for that MY would have been seatbelts and glass, which like the emissions stuff, may be as good, but it's not approved. Also the bumpers may be different, but I'm not sure about that.

Doable, yes, worth it... Doubt it.