Alright, it's note new, just new to us. 2-3 weeks of waiting gets us a white 2014 car with 57, 450km on the clock.

I seriously need to find a way to distinguish it from other cars as soon as possible. There was another one at the dealer, and there was one at the gas pump with the bumpers for an epower, but a quick glance would show 3 white E12 Notes within 20 feet of each other.

I'm wondering about trying to switch the bumpers to the Nismo ones, but the sensor holes make it a bit more difficult to find, it doesn't seem to be possible to get them shipped within Japan, and I'm not sure about spending the money on them. UGarage has them for about ¥7000 each though; They're in the wrong colors though.
Anyone have some good ideas on which sections to wrap in Blue on the front and back?
It's got a nice blue glow at the very top of the dash when the car is on, and in ECO mode. Not sure how much that will be on.

r15 rims - I'm getting fancy

Cloth seats are nice. I love how they leave the sheet of plastic on to show they took care to not get the seat dirty

The steering wheel seems a bit plain to me. I wonder how a Nismo wheel would look. UGarage has them for ¥10,000.

I'm a bit amazed at what an econo car in 2014 could have as options: Keyless, Push Start, Idle stop, eco mode, Supercharger, lane assist (warning maybe), collision warning, surround cameras, video in the mirror of the cameras, dvd/tv/GPS with bluetooth, alarm, usb, ETC reader, and I'm not too sure what else I'm missing. It feels fancy for being a small car. Guess I'm just not used to cars with options.

It doesn't have power seats, and it's using drum brakes on the rear which I know they work fine for the size of the car, but I dislike working on them.

Things that they did on the car for it to be 'roadworthy' - New air & oil filters, oil, brake fluid, pads & shoes, wipers, belts, battery, and I feel like I'm missing another basic maintenance, but most of the things that dealers in Japan tack on an extra ¥30,000 to change.

First impressions of how it drives is - way better than the 2009 Fit G did. It's better, which I expect of a car 5 years newer, and with 70,000 fewer km driven.

I would still perhaps eventually consider the Nismo seats because I like them, but I found a set of front and rear X-DIG-S seats that is the half leather, and has a fold-down arm rest for the back. It's on ¥20,000 and it's just over in Kyoto. I wouldn' t even consider it except I sort of want there to be the arm rest now that I know it exists, and I want to sort of make the car mine with some changes.

For ¥650,000 I'm pretty pleased. I might have found the same amount of stuff for a bit cheaper using Goo-net, but I'd have had to do a bit of traveling via train to do it, while this was walking around the corner.

We've now bundled my place to buy a car, car insurance, repair shop, Shaken inspection service, and gas station into one location around the corner. It's very Japanese of us.

To celebrate we went to a steak restaurant called Bronco Billies:

Ok, I didn't take the train to Sushi town, just into Kyoto to a place called Sushiro. It is a chain of conveyor belt sushi so @Snuze you might be able to find it near you. https://www.akindo-sushiro.co.jp/en/
I ended up spending quite a bit for cheap Sushi as they had interesting specials. Since you guys seem to like seeing some of this I thought I would share a few photos:
!
First up is a fusion sushi: It's squid tentacles marinated in a light sauce with the tiny red chili peppers, Cilantro, and (maybe) mustard leaves. It was actually slightly spicy (a rarity in Japan) and delicious.
!
This is another fusion one. It's fresh mozzarella with Basil topping a Salmon Nigiri. I ordered 4 plates of this as I rarely go to this restaurant. It's not traditional, but it's very tasty. My wife however prefers her dishes more traditional, and told me I could keep the rest of it.
!
This is deep fried Tiger Fugu according to Menu screen. It was mostly bone which I didn't eat, and I don't know if it could have been eaten. The meat was delicious, and the most flavorful Fugu I have had. Usually I just feel it is bland, and slightly rubbery. While tasty it was expensive for a cheap restaurant. ¥300+

Sushiro is a bit expensive for Kaiten Sushi at 120, & 170 per plate for normal orders, and over 300 for their limited time specials or special sushi. Usually its 100, 200 and then instead of charging more they just do 1 sushi on the plate instead of 2.
The increase in price is worthwhile though as they seem to be more willing to step outside of normal ingredients and try out new combinations.

@ita97 I continue to be impressed with the velocity at which Oppo can take any topic that starts serious (but does not need to retain gravitas) and turn it into written comedy.
Edit: It reminds me of a game from a long while ago on Facebook called Pet Dragons. It had a forum in which no normal topic could ever remain serious. That was one thing I enjoyed about that community and enjoy about this one.

@skyfire77 It looks like the photo is flipped. Or is that a right-hand drive car in the USA?

Hmmm... So the car we are in the process of buying, a 2014/15 Nissan Note X-DIG-S has a turbocharger according to the agent/broker/salesperson, but everything on Goonet.com says they are equipped with superchargers (OK, 463 listings say supercharger, and 30 say turbocharger, but I'm willing to guess that those 30 could just be sheer laziness or ignorance).
Wikipedia says it can have a supercharger on the engine, and doesn't mention a turbocharger...
I guess I should be looking into the engine bay next time I get a chance to look for a turbo. They look like this right:

I'd follow up with: Will Perseverance be creating dick pics like previous Mars rovers have done, and when will those be available on it's OnlyFans?

Well, we are starting the process of purchasing this 2014/5 Nissan Note X-DIG-S.
Post - Meeting Fit just isn't worth the cost of repair (even though we just put $1500 into it for the Shaken and plugs/ basic maintenance) at ¥200,000+.
We didn't want white, and were really interested in a blue X-DIG-S Note that was almost the same for options. It would have been a purchase based off 4 photos online though, and the dealer evaluation form said that it had huge scratches, and easily viewed paint repairs.
To be honest this white one is probably in about the same condition as far as scratches and dents, but our purchasing agent/ salesperson is going to have their repair shop fix everything up as part of the purchase. You can't see from the photo I took, but it's got tape all over it for scratches and small line dents running down both sides that are from it brushing against walls or power-line poles.
Our 2009 Fit had it's large dents before we purchased it as well, but it was a ¥400,000 car while this one is a ¥650,000 car.
The Note has:
Turbocharger
Backup camera
surround vehicle camera
Security System
Bluetooth
Collision warning of some sort (I get summary translation of the lengthy Japanese about car terms my wife isn't familiar with.)
Aluminum Rims (Which the Blue one we first wanted didn't have)
TV/DVD
Eco mode (Which the Salesperson thought was important to tell us).

The helpful, but not exactly costly for them thing they are doing is giving us a 2 year warranty on the car in exchange for our Fit. So it's a ¥32,000 credit on paper.

I'm not thrilled with White, but I am wondering how hard it is to do a half way decent job of wrapping a car myself. Or perhaps just wrapping the mirrors, and door handles to help us find it in the parking lot.

Now we just have to wait 3 weeks for all the paperwork to be processed, have the police come measure our parking space (again, since it isn't kept on file or something, and those pesky parking spaces keep changing sizes), and make 2 payments to cover the purchase price.
We wanted to just do a loan, and spread out the payments, but we're Gaijin without permanent residency and that means we aren't trustworthy without a co-signer (Everything I have read says that it's illegal for them to do that now, but they still do, and being a foreigner there's not much to do about it.)
So it's basically what we had but upgraded. Hooray.

I just had to drive an hour to Ikea today. Darn it. The Note is much better than the Fit. Better mileage, it actually does move when you touch the go pedal and the handling is better. The bar is admittedly low. Saw a few interesting things on the trip.

Ok, this is just in my neighborhood after I dropped my son of at the bus stop. But it’s a loved Fit Shuttle.

This looks nice with the small spoiler instead of a wing.

These guys are balancing on the small logs as they build this frame. I’m guessing the building is about to be torn down.

And here is a quick Volvo that I got to follow.

Well, the last few days have been decent for interesting car sightings. Though I've missed the chance while driving for a number of other cars. First up is a Mustang in all it's left hand drive rarity.

Next we have a heavily modified Mitsubishi Jeep. First chance I've had to get a photo of it

Of course we need a toyobaru with a wing

Skyline in the parking lot of the DYI store around the corner

The sweet backend of an F Type

And here we have a run of the mill Spacia, but this guy is the proud owner of a Hayabusa. He has at least 3 stickers declaring it, and I think the stickers half in frame on the upper left are saying the same thing in Kanji

Here is a pair of fraternal twin Ractis (Ractii?) parked next to each other

And I picked up some basic car washing supplies to get the black soot off the Note. Found a couple of things to further solidify the need for @svend to do some training with the team over at Eneos.

I found some pre-moistened q-tips at Daiso which I thought could be good to have in the car for cleaning those hard to reach places like the PRND letters.

I couldn't resist adding a photo of the pretty blue glow of economy mode.

It seems like they had this piece of window seal off for some reason, maybe PDR on the door, and it didn't snap back down properly

The driver's side plastic liner in the wheel arch is flopping around. It seems they rushed putting screws back in from something and missed a hole.

Oh look dried Bondo on the wheel. You'd think they could at least clean up their mess after fixing stuff. I know the dents the car had so I'm not surprised by the body filler, but finding it dried on the rims is...'really?'

Freshly washed.
Oh great, it has some little black things up on the roof. I'm not quite sure what to do to get them out. clay bar maybe?

@farscythe said in welp...if im gray later:

@adversemartyr lol i wouldnt bother miss merc about trivial shit like that

I don’t think the ability to call Bradley out on his BS publicly is trivial; more of a moral obligation, really.

@sampsonite24 I haven’t lived there in quite awhile Monicals is the only one of those I have ever been in. I guess the others came in after I moved away. Glad you can find the necessities.

@misterbuttercup I've gotten in trouble with my wife for making engine noises while doing that while my son is standing on the rear of the cart holding onto the handle. Nothing fast mind you, but it makes him laugh. My wife does not.

@ranwhenparked said in Good Morning, Oppo:

@adversemartyr This is the era when you couldn't show married couples in bed together on TV, and when the word "pregnant" was considered inappropriate, this is as close as Nash could go without facing a total advertising ban. Also note: "two twin beds" not "one double bed" - see, it's OK, there's a 2-centimeter gap between the seat backs, so they're not really on the same bed.

Exactly. twin beds. It's safe. At least until Wanda hexes it into a double, and disappears the cockblocker into the future.

@farscythe maybe Mercedes could help you out if it happens. Maybe.

@thejwt I honestly have no idea. This happened through a friend because of an immediate need a few months ago. I know that lots of things keep changing, but there's always a market for native English speakers to teach. My guess would be that there will be lots of hiring happening as there has been almost none in the last year with the border lockdowns when non-Japanese citizens couldn't enter, and new visas (essentially) weren't being approved. So people left, but no one replaced them.

@skyfire77 was looking for this.

@davesaddiction I'm not disagreeing with you in any way that number sucks; I just want ask if you know if China would be above the USA if 're-education centers' were included (are they), and if death penalties went away there?
sorry, I'm always wondering what statistics and technicalities are hiding from us.

@whoistheleader said in Driving the Note to/from Work:

@adversemartyr You could get a small boat or you could get a small lighter than air craft.

It's Japan there are regulations about that because, something... I'm sure I'd need special training to captain a boat/canoe/kayak across 50m of moving water. I've been told by some neighbors that the water in the river is moving too fast to safely swim or kayak there (It's not, but since you would need to be aware of a current its out of bounds for 'normal' people I guess). It's one more thing to have to learn about over a language barrier.

@whoistheleader I want a small boat. There's a Starbucks in a mall right across the river. It would be a 10 minute walk if the river wasn't there.. That would be the closest full size grocery store, clothing retailer, bike shop, restaurant, etc... . Maybe even the closest train station even Stupid river.