Nagoya, however, was one of the blessed areas, and on a Miata-related Facebook group I'm a part of, my friend Matsuda-san, who I met in the flesh for the first time back in October, posted a photo of his Roadster underneath a row of blooming cherry blossom trees. Matsuda-san also dabbles in a bit of photography, and the picture turned out very nice. I left a comment stating how Aizu wasn't supposed to reach full bloom until the latter portion of the month. Matsuda-san liked my comment, and replied with an invitation. Not to Nagoya, but to Niigata Prefecture for a Roadster meeting that very weekend. With nothing else to do that Sunday, I decided to take the trip.
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| Everyone at the meet (Photo: Matsuda-san) |
It was a three hour trip with two hours by expressway, first west on the Banetsu, then south on the Hokuriku Expressway. (It was about $40 going one way in tolls.) The meeting was in a village in the southern, mountainous portion of the city of Joetsu. Although I left with plenty of time to get there, I ended up having to take a detour, as the road that Google Maps chose for me was still closed for the season at the time. (Luckily, I was not the only person who made this mistake. When I got to the closed road, another Roadster owner was there similarly confused.)
I arrived at the event about half an hour late, just as they were finishing the opening meeting. After I finally registered, everyone dispersed and moved around the different cars, talking with each other about the various mods that they did on their cars. There was one event where they had a competition to see who could cook an oyster over an open flame the fastest just by using a fan. I didn't participate due to the oyster part; now if it was meat they were cooking, I'd be stepping over people just to get to the front.
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| Someone testing out a rim cleaning product on Matsuda-san's Roadster. Wish I'd gotten the name. |
I also met lots of new people there. Among them were Fujimoto-san, an English linguistics professor at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. (Small world, huh?) I also met Wakasa-san, the chief engineer for the ND Roadster's (the latest model) powertrain. The person I was most surprised to meet was Mizuouchi-san, the head of the Roadster Club of Japan (aka the Roadster owner association). He had come all the way from Tokyo just for the event. Even though this was a regional meeting, people came from as far away as Fukui Prefecture. There was a sleepover at the event location the night before, and Fujimoto-san told me that the party apparently lasted all night, with everyone getting totally plastered. If I didn't have plans that Saturday, I'm sure I would've been among those people.
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| Fujimoto-san on the left, rummaging for his business card (Photo: Matsuda-san) |
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| Wakasa-san and I exchanging business cards (Photo: Matsuda-san) |
I've started getting more comfortable with speaking in Japanese. Yes, it's still shit, but I at least have enough basic skills to [kinda] convey what I want to say. I ended up exchanging quite a few of my business cards with the other Roadster owners, which is a good thing because I ordered a hundred of them last year and only used less than 10 before that day. (I'm sure that I'll use many more at Karuizawa next month for the national meet.) In addition to the business cards, I got interviewed by the editor of the association's editor about Tackawanna. I told everyone about our history together; the mods I did, the trip the Hachinohe that went haywire, shipping the car home when I leave Japan, etc. If I end up in the magazine, I'll update the blog with another post, including a [shitty] translation.
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| Me talking with the editor (orange jacket). Noticing a pattern yet? (Photo: Matsuda-san) |
At one point towards the end, we all sat down for a lecture from the chief engineer of the ND Roadster's development. He discussed the basic history of two-seater cars and how they came to the design that the Roadster is now world-renowned for. I couldn't understand most of the Japanese, but the chief engineer drew very excellent drawings on the whiteboard of various two and four-seater cars. I can see why they picked him as chief engineer; he seemed to know his shit.
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| Me shaking hands with the chief engineer |
Following the lecture was a rock-paper-scissors event. I won some local instant ramen. For those curious as to how the game looked, I shot a video.
Lunch was curry, provided by the event, which was pretty good. After the meeting adjorned, Matsuda-san invited me and a few other Roadster owners to go out for soba. It was actually my first time having soba, so I was excited to go. Over dinner, we learned more about each other's backgrounds. For example, Matsuda-san told me that he worked at a metal recycling plant, which melted copper and other precious metals at high temperature for recasting. The soba restaurant was further south from the meeting event, but because it was next to the Joshin-etsu Expressway, the drive home took about the same amount of time as getting there. (Same price for the tolls, too. 痛い！)
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| Matsuda-san getting a convoy shot at the red light |
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| Soba spread |
With my time in Japan already halfway done, this year I plan to do more travelling on the weekends if I can. I also want to take a road trip this September, during summer vacation, to Hiroshima, to bring Tackawanna home, in a romantic sense. That's at least a 14-hour one-way trip with breaks. I've already learned my lesson for next time: don't go during a national holiday, when the auto repair shops are closed. That, and the major things that can go wrong have already been fixed.
Oh, and I took a decent dashcam footage last weekend during a beautiful day outside with my new action camera. A TWT post for that will come soon. But for now, here's some action camera footage of me travelling on the Banetsu ($40, and it was only one plane on that portion). 楽しんで見てくださ〜い。
-wp
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