Travels with Tackawanna 1: Route 374 and Lake Inawashiro

Earlier today, Tackawanna and I went out on our first adventure. I took Fukushima Prefecture Route 374 to National Route 294, then to Fukushima Prefecture Route 9 via a short hop on Fukushima Prefecture Route 6. That route took me along the eastern coastline of Route 374, which then deposited me on National Route 49, which I then took all the way back to Aizuwakamatsu. Here is the full route that I took.

Route 374 is a 9.4 mile long road of hairpins galore. There were 21 of them, most of them occurring before reaching the summit area. I spent the entire hill climb in second gear, as it was the only gear that I really needed. I was able to get up to third, but then had to rely on staying in neutral with the clutch depressed for half of the descent. In the meantime, I kept my speed down and pumped the brakes on the straights to help keep them cool.

"Wind farm" up in the mountains

Route 294 certainly didn't feel like a national route. There are areas when it transforms into narrower roads surrounded entirely by rural neignborhoods. Other areas, it's straight farmland for miles and miles. In a way, it felt very much like driving New Hampshire. Only on narrower roads. And on the wrong side of the road.

The village would come and go in about a kilometer

The scenery on Route 9, which mostly ran right along Lake Inawashiro, was absolutely gorgeous. It was especially cool right next to Lake Inawashiro. The temperature was still the same (mid-high 70s), but the humidity was gone, and there was a nice breeze. There were some rest areas for people to get out, but I didn't stop this time. Next time, though, I'll stop, because the scenery was that fantastic.

The dashcam does this shot no justice

Route 49 had a lot of travellers today. Some of them were taking their recreational vehicles and "rock climbers." I actually saw a Caterham pass me on the way back to Aizuwakamatsu. Maybe you'll find it in the dashcam video.

Yes, I said dashcam video. The whole trip from the University to the supermarket was just under two hours, and I've put the whole thing up on Youtube for anyone interested. That's a lot longer than most people would probably care for, so if you want to see certain highlights from the trip, just click on the text along the upper portion of the video (i.e. above the red play button) to launch it in Youtube. From there, click on the times in the description to jump straight to the relevant section.

I have too much to do tomorrow, so there will be no trip then. But there may be one next week, after I pick up some sunblock that actually works instead of that spray-on shit.

-wp

Vehicle registration

I transferred Tackawanna over to my name yesterday. The car is now officially mine. Huzzah.

I had to go to the District Land Transport Office in Fukushima City to get it done. Fukushima City is the capital of Fukushima prefecture. (No surprise there, right?) It was an hour's trip away via the expressway, or an hour and a half via the mountain roads. To save time and money, I'd leave in the morning, missing my other Japanese class for the week, travel there on the expressway, get the plates, and return to Aizuwakamatsu by mid-afternoon before my next class.

Andou-san, the dealer from Kanagawa, would be unable to help me with the transfer due to distance. The foreign personnel advisor that I usually ask for help felt uncomfortable with the process and the distance to the DLTO, so she passed as well. A local Toyota stealership dealership offered to do the transfer for me, but only if I gave them about $250 and two weeks to do it, no loaner included. I wanted to get it done myself to save money, and there were plenty of tutorials online explaining how to do it. My friend and colleague, Victor, a master's student from Belarus, tried to get me in contact with two people who supposedly lived in the area that helped him out with his transfer and could do the same for me. When neither of them could do it, he offered to come with me instead. He was pretty helpful about it.

We were supposed to leave early yesterday so that we would be the first in line at the DLTO. We ended up having to take a detour, because I had lost my inkan certificate (for proof of stamp) and juuminhyou (proof of residence). I therefore had to stop at city hall and get replacements for both. What a wonderful start to the day. Thankfully, that was the worst of it. The rest went relatively smoothly.

The DTLO also has the roadworthiness testing facility on site. Plenty of cars were there lining up for the inspection process. Most of the people at the DLTO were dealers and mechanics, and some of them were even bringing cars by the truckful. We parked, pulled off the old plates, and went inside to the information counter. The person behind the information counter was friendly, and while he was hesitant to use English at first, he eventually tried communicating in some English, and wrote down my living address in kanji for us. The overall wait was also much shorter than we had anticipated; we spent more time figuring out the forms than we did waiting for the plate.

The only thing that was wrong, however, was the license plate itself. I wanted to get a customized license plate (and by customized, I mean the four large numbers on the plate, which is all you can do. Here's an example of what it looks like customized), and I had heard from the advice given that they would make the plates same day if they needed to make them. As it turned out, I needed to call the DTLO a week prior to my visit to reserve it. Total bummer. However, if I really want the plates, I can probably do it in the future. Besides, between the forms, registration, and tolls, I still paid one-fifth of the original price that Toyota wanted. Even if I went to register again, I'd still be saving money.

We saw plenty of cars waiting in the parking lot. One of them, which actually pulled in behind us, was a late-70s Pontiac Firebird. The temporary plates on the car stated that the car was being stored in Aizubange, which is a town just north of Aizuwakamatsu. The dealer/owner also let us take a look at, and some pictures of, the car, which was in pretty good condition given its age. That car would probably go for around $40k market in Japan. (The Japanese are as crazy for USDM as Americans are for JDM.)

Chevy C10 Blazer

Pontiac Firebird in the last stage of inspection

The red line across the plate indicates temporary registration

>yfw automatic

How this thing manages to pass emissions here, I have no clue

Pre-Fiat Abarth sports coupe (1960s-era)

Third-gen Chevy Van

Unfortunately, between our conversations and the music in the background, I don't have any good dashcam footage. However, I will be filming plenty of it, especially this summer when there are so many mountain roads to travel on. As a matter of fact, I plan on taking some time to tackle the local roads tomorrow. My first target is the one that I've been meaning to see since before I got here: Route 374. It's going to be an interesting trip to say the least, and I'll try my darndest to get some good footage.

-wp

ロードスター GET 3

(I did not forget about this post; I've been busy with school lately.)

Tokyo is the largest metropolitan area on the planet. Over 38 million people live within the 23 wards. Even as the overall population of Japan shrinks, Tokyo's population continues to grow. Space is a premium in the city, and everything is built right next to each other. In theory, this means that traffic in the city is going to be god awful.

My route to get home took me through Tokyo. I would have to take the Tomei Expressway to the Shuto Expressway, one of the ring roads (or beltways, if you want to call it that) that go around the city. After that, I would have to connect onto the Tohoku Expressway, which I could then take straight up to the Ban-etsu Expressway to get back to Aizuwakamatsu. The estimated trip time was about four hours. Without traffic.

Speak of the devil, how was the traffic? This was a Sunday evening, predictably when traffic should be the "worst", as people travelling outside the city for the weekend should be on their way back. I've driven in Manhattan twice before when I was still in the states, and the roads there were not scary to me. Tokyo, however, would be an entirely different beast.

And, now that I've found out, a tame one, too.

While I was still above ground

Well, I guess it's not a "real" Tokyo driving experience as I never left the highway. But with the exception of two relatively small stop and go sections, and one reduced speed section, it was smooth sailing throughout. It did feel a bit disorienting travelling on a highway right in between apartment buildings. Tokyo lacks the grid system that New York is both blessed and plagued with.

Got to drive behind this Ferrari for a few miles. Would you believe they kept the speed limit the whole time?

A key highlight from the trip was the connector from the C2 to the Tohoku Expressway. I ended up making four turns on a curve with a grade ranging anywhere from 2-4%. The video below is from my dashcam, which I installed before I left the dealer.

I stopped at two rest stops. The first was in Saitama to get some nourishment. While I was there, I saw some interesting cars, most noticeably the old Buick (?) with Fukushima plates, and an orange Dodge Challenger with a Hemi. (Yes, you can get them here, provided that you import them yourself. The guy must have had crazy money to do so.)

USDM is to Japan as JDM is to the US

The other was later on to prevent myself from falling asleep at the wheel. (I should point out that tired driving is treated like drunk driving here, and drunk driving is definitely no game.) While I was out of the car getting a bottle of water from the vending machine, I reflected on the drive so far. The Roadster had what felt like a newer clutch that was yet not a hassle to operate in stop-and-go. I only stalled once, at the toll both heading onto the C2, but never again afterwards. And while my back was feeling sore, it was probably from all the work I was doing to the seat and not the seat iself.

All in all, after about 7000 yen in tolls and four and a half hours of actual driving, I made it back to Aizuwakamatsu with Tackawanna, my daily driver for the next two years. This is the car that I want to drive, and it's the one that I plan to take back to the states with me after I finish my degree. I still have to transfer the car into my name, but once I do that, the car is officially mine. I will post a review about the car itself after about a month of ownership.

Tackawanna, in all her JDM glory

終わり

-wp

ロードスター GET 2

At around 20 minutes past one, I arrived at Andou Car Collection, where the dealer, Tatsuhito Andou, both lives and works. I had looked up his address on Google Maps beforehand and looked at the street view. As it turned out, his house is a one-level wooden shack sandwiched behind another house, with a paved driveway on a slight incline.

Andou-san made the most out of the space he had. In front of his house were stacks of tires, some on rims and some not. A two-car carport in the back of the lot housed most of his tools. All of the cars that Andou-san was selling were parked in his driveway. I noticed a V8 Toyota sedan, a Honda motorcycle, a Nissan March, and two Renaults, among other cars. But my attention wasn't so much on these as it was the Roadster parked in front of all of them that I had travelled so far to collect.

Andou-san invited me into his humble abode, where there was a small office area complete with table and chairs. We signed paperwork, and I paid him the remaining balance. After that, there was no time to waste. I needed to get started on the modification.

Andou-san gave me a pair of "English" slippers to wear inside his house

When I first sat in the Roadster, I noticed that the headroom could improve a bit, but that the legroom needed a definite increase. This was especially required as the steering wheel is not telescopic. (That is to say, the steering wheel does not move up or down.) This was what I was preparing for, and I knew that I needed to finish the foamectomy that was required so that I could be on the road before 1700 hrs. I had brought my own tools with me, so I should've been all set.

Well, it wasn't easy...

I managed to get one floor bolt in before I couldn't do any more. The remaining three were torqued on very tight, and neither a tire iron nor CRC 5-56 (WD-40) could get the bolts loose. Luckily, Andou-san had a power torque wrench that he used to get the bolts free. After that were the seat bolts connecting the seat to the slider, which were annoying to free, as my sockets couldn't reach them. And that wasn't even the hardest part.

By that time, I had to move into the shade. Andou-san moved his car (a Daihatsu Move) back a little bit so that there would be enough room to work in an area where the house next door blocked the sun. His English was pretty good, and he was able to explain to me that in addition to the shaken, he also replaced the A/C compressor, so I now had A/C that blew cold air. He was very professional and helpful, provided refreshment and his bathroom, and stayed with me throughout most of the mod, taking the occasional break to answer his phone in his soft baritone voice. If he had said no to letting me do the modification in his driveway, I don't know what I would've done, especially looking back in hindsight.

The seat upholstery was secured to the seat via hog rings. If you don't know what a hog ring is, go Google it, and then picture them all rusty and gross. That's what I had to pull out with needle-nose pliers. Andou-san gave me a pair of wire clippers to try to cut through them, but they didn't work. I must have pulled out at least 25 of them, and I noticed one more intact as I was putting the seat back together later.

I then tried to separate the seat into two pieces by taking off the plastic brackets and the bolts on one side of the seat assembly. When we got to the easy side, the screw would not turn. We both tried getting it out, but it would not budge. I was not looking forward to stripped screws, so I decided to just work with the two seat pieces still connected..

I took the foam pad from the back of the seat and shaved off a few centimeters of foam towards the back. The only knife I had was Andou-san's box cutter, and I actually broke it and had to borrow another. With the excess foam now gone, I reconnected the upholstery to the seat using zip ties, and then reinstalled the seat back into the car. Then I took a seat in it. There was much more headroom, and I could now clearly see out of the car.

But it did nothing for the legroom.

Tired and itching to get home, I decided to live with it. The legroom wasn't a major problem or a deal-breaker, but in the future, I'll have to take out the driver-side door handle, so that it will stop scraping against my knees. After removing the driver-side sun visor, installing my dash cam, and a quick trip to the bathroom, it was time to go. I thanked Andou-san for his time and grace, and he went to the curb to watch traffic for me. Feeling nervous, I got into the car and started the engine.

I had had relatively little practice driving a manual transmission in the states. The last time I did was in January, and now I was about to drive five hours, partially through the largest metropolitan area on the planet, to go home. I took a deep breath, started the car, and put it into reverse. I put the clutch at the biting point and slowly rolled backwards. Once on the street, I gave one last wave to Andou-san, shifted into first, and managed to get moving without stalling. After a quick stop for gas half a mile later, it was time to go back to Aizu.

つづく

-wp

ロードスター GET 1

One of Japan's biggest upsells is the precision at which public transport operates. When a train leaves at a given time, it leaves at that time. Not five minutes after, not fifteen minutes after, but on the dot. This means that if you want to want to travel on Japanese public transport, and you need to connect trains or busses, you'll have to hustle.

And hustle did I. I had to take a train from Aizuwakamatsu to Koriyama, then the Shinkansen to Omiya (Saitama), then a train to Shinjuku station, then a train to Ebina, and THEN a bus to the bus stop conveniently located across the street from the dealer. The respective time gaps between each leg were 9, 12, 14, and 17 minutes. I had purchased the tickets required for the first three legs in Aizuwakamatsu, but after that, I was on my own.

Akabeko display on the platform in Aizuwakamatsu

Platform view in Aizuwakamatsu

Commuter train that ends in Aizuwakamatsu

The regional express train to Koriyama

Japan's railways are privatized, so there are multiple groups that have their own regional monopolies. In my case, there were JR East and JR Tokyo. The buses are also on their own thing, so if you're traveling one-way, you need time to buy tickets. Therefore, I would need the extra times between the latter three legs to purchase the tickets and get to the train/bus.

Beautiful green mountains in the mountains of Fukushima

The Touhoku Shinkansen line in Koriyama

I came close to missing the train in Shinjuku. They deposited me at the station across the street from where the Ebina train would be leaving from. (Shinjuku Station is one of the largest in Tokyo.) I had to cross the street and purchase the ticket at the ticket machine, which brought me to my next hurdle. With the ticket machines, at least in this section of the country, I had to find my destination in a table and select the corresponding fare from the machine. That confusing enough for you? If I was 15 seconds slower than I was, I would have missed my train.

The JR station(s) in Shinjuku.

But alas, it got no better in Ebina. I waked out the west gate towards the mall looking for the bus gate, and after waiting quite a while in line at the ticket counter, I managed to flag down a worker. Good news: I could pay the driver.

Bad news: the correct bus stop was at the east gate.

The bus stop in question

With five minutes to go, I sprinted across the station to the east gate. I tried to find bus stop number three, which I figured was where bus number three was. I rushed down just in time to see the bus pull away from the stop. It couldn't go far anyways, because it had to wait at a red light.

I got on the bus and asked if it was going to my destination. It wasn't. I got off, and the light turned green. Right behind it was my bus. Which was going too fast to stop.

JUST

Luckily, a few people, one of who I assumed was an American boy, managed to help me figure out where I should have been. As it turned out, because there were buses with various assigned numbers, the bus number stops didn't necessary line up. So bus number three left from bus stop number six. Are you confused again? I sure was.

I checked the schedule, and the next bus was not to show up for 50 minutes. Defeated, I sat on the bench next to the stop. I was so close to getting there when I told the dealer I was coming. Then again, I was still going to be meeting him earlier than our original agreed-upon time, so I guess it's not that bad.

Would my car give me as much trouble as the bus? I hoped not.

つづく

-wp

ロードスター GET 0.5

I'm now two days away from picking up my Roadster. On Wednesday, I received a fax of my shaken (the piece of paper proving that my car is roadworthy), so yesterday I forwarded all of my information to the insurance company. They got back to me later in the day to tell me that they needed some time to process my paperwork. Obviously, I wanted to get this insurance effective on Sunday, but they would be closed. (The JCI, or comuplory insurance, is enough for legal purchases, but I'm going to be driving this car through Tokyo. I don't want to take any chances.)

The insurance agent spoke with her supervisor and said that they would take a scanned copy of the signed contract as interim proof while I sent out the contract through express mail. I would then do a wire transfer of the premium to their bank account. Once they had the scan and the money, they would send a confirmation e-mail stating that I would be covered starting on Sunday. Not really official proof of insurance, but good enough for my case.

Today I had to powerwalk to the local post office (thankfully not the central one that I usually go to) to mail the contract and do the wire transfer. Insurance was about $900 for mid-tier coverage for the year, which seemed like a lot. Then again, considering how much I was being charged in America, any insurance rate is a bargain.

Later today, I'll have to stop by the Foreign Personnel Advisor's office and sign the contract for the parking space. It's about $28/month, and right next to campus. Once I have done that, I'll need to get it certified at a local police box for registration, which I will probably do early next week. I already have a basic tool kit, which I'll need when I go to the dealer, because I will have to work on the seat. I also purchased a dashcam, so I'll have pictures and videos of the road during my travels.

I'm going to cover the trip in a three-part series. The first part will be getting to the dealership, which is located a few miles west of Yokohama. The second part will be the dealership itself, including me trying to get that seat ready. The third part will be bringing the car home. I'll hammer out these posts throughout next week. お楽しみに！

-wp

Good things to come

It's been a while since I've done any blog posting, mainly due to a combination of busyness and laziness. Things have been going relatively well. Here is a brief list of what's been done and what's to come:

• Golden Week was this past week. I basically stayed in the dorm, played Fallout 4, and did some homework and cleaning. Only time I left was to go to the convenience store, which was once.
• Wire transfers to Japan are annoying. First Niagara kept botching my transfer request, so I tried to go with Western Union Online FX, which waited until after it verified my account and took my money that they don't do transfers to Japan Post Yuucho. Two other FXs said the same thing, but without the "let's take your money first and see what happens" process. Finally went back to First Niagara, with instructions filled out to the most minute detail, and they sent it out properly this time. I finally got the money this morning, after three weeks of restless waiting. My finances should now be sorted out for a few months.
• Japanese classes start this coming Wednesday, which is going to be helpful, because I'm tired of not having as good of a grip on the language as I should be having. My communication skills should go up from there, and I can have more meaningful conversations in Japanese. (I actually confused my dormmates the other day by using the regional pronunciation of "coupon" (kyoo-pahn) instead of the actual one.)
• That Roadster I mentioned in the last post? I'm buying it. Now that I have the money, I can finish paying the guy when I go down to Kanagawa to get the car. That will be on May 15th. I'll make a higher-effort post (or maybe a series?) when I get to that point. Not sure yet if I will be going alone.

And that's about it. Ta-ta for now.

-wp