The Long and Winding Road

Before entering the weekend, I thought it would be a good idea to sign in and give our small audience here something more to read, since we're still living in 19th century style at the house... no telephones, TV, or internet, at least for the time being. It also struck me this morning that I hadn't yet reported in again about the family vehicle situation (from two posts ago).

As it turns out, the Honda Odyssey that we intended to buy was indeed about 15 centimeters (less than 6 inches) too long for our parking spot. We were very fortunate to have a Japanese friend from work help me explain the situation to the car dealership owner, who in turn was very kind to let us simply pick a different vehicle on the lot that fit the parking requirements. We were even able to transfer the down payment from the Honda to our future car, so we did not lose any of our investment in the process.

Turns out that the "next best" alternative to the Odyssey on the car lot was a 1998 Suzuki Cultus Wagon, which appears to be similar to the Suzuki Forenza Wagon in the USA. Nicki (who wasn't with me at the dealership) let me know in advance that she had her heart set on one of the Big 3 - Honda, Toyota, or Nissan - but she would be okay with a Subaru, too. She didn't mention Suzuki at all and the only real experience that I could recall about Suzuki's brand name was hearing about the old Suzuki Samurai, which from what I recall looked like a Jeep Wrangler but had a tendance to flip over on turns due to its high center of gravity. After looking at several other makes and models, I kept going back to the Suzuki wagon. It was pretty sharp looking, it was a wagon (which Nicki wanted if we couldn't get a minivan), it looked clean and dent free, it seemed in good mechanical condition for its age, and most importantly, it fit into our parking spot at home. And it was about 4 years younger than all the other cars we were looking at buying.

Long story short, last night I went back up to the dealership to pick up our new 1998 Suzuki Cultus station wagon. It has a bit over 50,000 kilometers (approx. 31,000 miles) on it, only one previous owner who kept very detailed records, and we paid a grand total of about 260,000 yen ($2300 US). Not bad for a car with so few miles on it.

The next fun step in the process was to actually get in the car, turn the key, and roll off the car lot and back home. I had a map written in English on my passenger-side seat, good written directions to the nearest main street from my Japanese coworker, and about 1/8th of a tank of gas, which I was told was plenty to get me back to Yokosuka. By then, it was past 6pm and the sun had set, so I had to rely on my night vision to help me get back to base, which as I get older is significantly less useful than my daytime vision. Getting back to the main road following the directions my coworker gave me was pretty easy. From there, my only real other concern was getting from that main road to a future main road, Route 27. As I got closer, I realized that I was in the wrong lane at one intersection where I was supposed to go straight, but instead I turned right. At that point, I decided to wing it and just use my common sense and the English-based map on my passenger seat. I figured out roughly where I was and found an alternate path to Route 27. From there, it was a breeze. My gas tank was on fumes by the time I got back to Yokosuka, but I was able to fill up on base and then I went on home.

The good news is that when I got home, Nicki was actually impressed with the looks of the car - good for me because both of us were skeptical at first about the purchase. I just hope it stays mechanically sound during our duration here in Japan - then I'll feel like we got our money's worth.