Snow in Kansai

[AdverseMartyr]

So it’s probably a guaranteed formula. I purchased summer tires for the Note from Costco last Thursday for its Shaken (that it passed today). as the winter tires were starting to weather crack and wouldn’t have passed. Yokohama Blue Earth GTs, nothing fancy.
So of course it actually goes below freezing this week and we get snow accumulating.

I was waiting until now to do tires as I wanted to swap which rims are summer and which are winter. If I need winter ones I’ll get them used from UpGarage and have them put on the Nissan branded rims.
Shaken was ¥90,000. Most of the cost was having them do basic maintenance that is annoying to do- flushing fluids- before the inspection.

[pip bip]

@AdverseMartyr not cheap

[TheJWT]

Yikes We had a few flakes this afternoon but nothing stuck.

[AdverseMartyr]

@pip-bip petroleum byproducts are expensive because of the cost of recycling over here. It was 1/3 road tax, 1/9 filters and wipers, and the other 5/9s was fluids.

[Napoli]

@AdverseMartyr I spent a semester in Osaka, I was a student at Kansai Gaidai. How did you end up out there? I had so much fun living in Japan. I may need to convince my wife that we need to go out there to see the F1 race next year.

[facw]

@AdverseMartyr I'm kind of shocked to learn there's Costco in Japan. Its hugeness seems sort of antithetical to dense Japan. The pictures don't lie though:

[AdverseMartyr]

@Napoli that’s a long story that starts sometime in the 80s with Karate Kid, King Arthur and an interest in swords and knights, and TMNT.
Then in 1997 after I’d graduated from high school my parents left home and moved to Kobe. I visited them a few times while working in Christian missions and eventually my work led to me moving to Takatsuki with a 15 year layover in Hawaii. That’s the summary though.

[AdverseMartyr]

@facw it’s actually not so strange for a store to be so big though. Yodobashi Camera has always been huge. They just tend to be multilevel rather than sprawling.

[ash78]

@facw TIL, as well. I also just learned they have Costco in the UK. Same idea, even though they're not as "miniaturized" as Japan.

I guess it surprises me because I see so few Costco locations in the US compared to most retailers, so I felt the odds of them being overseas was slim. Doubly so because they're the poster child for huge packaging and American Excess

[facw]

@AdverseMartyr Big stores I can believe, but the bulk wholesale model seems challenging given the size of Japanese homes.

[theturbomrt]

@AdverseMartyr said in Snow in Kansai:

and the other 5/9s was fluids.

Here in freedomland the nearest storm drain is a great fluid recycler
/s

[AdverseMartyr]

@facw there’s a lot of space for pantry items usually in an actual house, sometimes it’s even in the floor, but it’s usually there. There’s a lot of items that a few people will go in on together. It’s common to see 3-4 women working through the aisles together, and putting stuff into one cart. So grape seed oil might be sold in a pack of 4 four for 2000 yen, and they each take one bottle. It probably saves 400 yen on the price compared to the neighborhood grocery store.