New car

Here’s our new car.

It’s the biggest car we’ve ever had - seating for 7! No more sports cars for us. I definitely felt pretty old when I was telling a friend how excited I was about the automatic sliding door opener on my key chain – oh, the convenience! We wanted to get a car with more seating so that when we have visitors (hint, hint!) we’ll be able to go places in one car. Nathan and I have been debating whether it is a minivan or more of a station wagon cross over type car. It’s a tough call. It drives more like a car, is an automatic, has a 4 cylinder engine and gets car like gas mileage - those were all bonuses. Please write in the comments section if you have a minivan or wagon opinion – we both love being right, so one of us will be thrilled when the votes are tallied!


We think we got a pretty good deal on it, but it’s hard to say. There is a car lot on the base that is dubbed the ‘lemon lot.’ People who are PCSing back to the States put their cars there and sell them for pretty cheap. We saw a few cars that were tempting and about $750. There is something called a JCI that needs to be renewed every 2 years and that bill is almost $2,000, and most of the cars that were pretty cheap have that due in a few months. Also, there is a bunch of paperwork involved in transferring over the vehicle. We kept trying to find one of the lemon lot cars that we could get excited about, but nothing really looked that good. The fact that we were looking on something called the lemon lot kind of turned us off to that option, as well. We were also under a time crunch because we already had a move in date for our house and it is about 20 minutes from the base, so we needed everything taken care of with the car by then. We ended up going with a dealer in town that came recommended. She works with people on the base all the time, so she knew exactly what paperwork we needed to do. We got a full 2 year JCI, 6 month warranty and she’ll do oil changes and any tune ups that we need for the 3 years we’re here. As people who don’t know much about cars, we felt like this was our best bet. People at Nathan’s work keep telling him we were fleeced by the dealer, since there are cars here that are practically free, but who knows?


We’re still in the market for a car for Nathan to get back and forth to work in, and I think the lemon lot will be good enough for that! Nathan had to give up his dream of scootering (scooting?) to work because getting a license for a scooter is the same as for a motorcycle and seems pretty involved. I think it still sounds kind of fun and that he should go for it, but I’m pretty sure the scooter’s stock has dropped a lot since the onset of the rainy season.


Driving here was pretty wild at first. Since we’re SOFA sponsored, which means we fall under different rules than Japanese citizens or regular tourists, getting drivers licenses was pretty easy. We had to take a 40 question test and could miss 10. I was pretty nervous the night before that I studied extra hard and studied a little more in the morning and also took an extra long time checking my answers - some of you might remember one of the most embarrassing moments of my adulthood when I failed the Oregon driving test last year. I was really terrified of a repeat performance, but I ended up getting 100%! Obviously I was pretty excited - no comment on whether the rumors of me hugging the instructor when he told me my score are true!


Being so terrified of the written portion, I really didn’t have enough time to be nervous for the actual driving part. Nathan and I both passed that part with flying colors. I think our week of driving practice in South Africa on the left really helped. We got all of our turns in to oncoming traffic out of the way there! After about a week of driving on the roads here, it feels really normal to be on the left. The things that bother me the most are the shifter and the wipers are done with the left hand and the turn signal is on the right. So, lots of times when I’m turning I’m will accidentally hit my wipers. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but for now it’s the rainy season, so I haven’t gotten too many weird looks! I also always get in to drive on the wrong side. It's so weird having the steering wheel on the right. The signs are still pretty foreign to us. On our recent road trip to Nagasaki, the further we got from Sasebo, the less English and more Kanji was written on them. We will have to start studying our Kanji before venturing much further!


Whew – I’m sure this was more than you ever cared to know about getting a car and a license in Japan! We’re sure glad to be done with the whole process.