Review: 8th generation Daihatsu Hijet (w/ video!)

jay-dee-ehm

As I have said many times in the past, Tackawanna suffers from an unprofessional and [slightly] unseemly paint job, which included the hood of the car painted in black. Black hoods are a thing in car culture, because apparently that reduces the glare on the hood being reflected into the driver's eyes. I didn't mind the black hood, and thought that it looked actually cool. But then the winter came, and that's where the shitty paint job started showing its true colors. And by showing, I mean shedding the paint.

The plan was to paint only the hood by myself when it gets warmer, as I wouldn't be doing a total repaint job until Tackawanna is in the states with me. However, this did not sit well with home base, which was concerned that I'd be huffing the fumes and would kill myself, even with a respirator. I tried to assure her that I would take the proper steps, but this was countered with an offer to compensate me for having someone else repaint the hood for me. This ended the argument rather quickly.

I brought my car to Saitou-san, who said that he would have the hood repainted to match the rest of my car. (At this point, faded grey looks a LOT better than the current status of the hood, what with its bare metal being slowly exposed and all.) Like last time, when he gave me the Minica to drive around, he had another loaner lined up for me. He called it the "Super Minivan." At first, I was confused, as he had a giant black Toyota Voxy van with no plates on the lot being prepped for a customer. But then he brought me outside to the vehicle tucked in the corner of his small parking lot. It was a Daihatsu Hijet.

Ladies and gentlemen, I shit you not when I tell you that I spent the first mile driving home in straight up laughter. Despite what it is and its current condition, the car is an absolute blast to drive. I had plenty of fun just taking it around town for a spin. The van also sported a manual transmission, so I finally got to experience driving a manual kei car during my time in Japan.

I've always wanted a GoPro, but the price point, and subsequent mediocre quality, put me off from making the purchase. However, I did find a camera online called the one.five from a small British brand called Olfi. Even though I still had to go to the local electronics store and pick up a GoPro suction mount for a vehicle, I still saved over $100 compared to the cheapest new GoPro on the market today. I'm also quite happy with the image quality.

So for this post, instead of typing out my review, I'm doing things a bit differently. I've actually filmed it and am posting it right here for you all to see. As you can tell by the video, Clarkson, May, and Hammond aren't in danger of losing their spotlight. I'm usually camera shy and wary of public speaking, so I still have yet to get truly comfortable in filming myself while talking. However, I hope that I'll get better at this in the future, and maybe I'll take a friend so we can get action shots of the car. (I can say for certain that having a better camera helps!)

As an aside, I arrived in Japan exactly one year ago today. I can't believe that half of my time in Japan has already come and gone. I've got so much to do, and now I have less time to do it all. Hopefully I can put some more time into this blog, too. I've already got a few posts in my backlog that I have yet to type, but lately it's been a matter of laziness in typing them all out. Blog posts (or, at least mine) usually don't take 15 minutes to hack out.

Anyways, enjoy the video.

-wp