Well, add me to the list of people who can count 2021 a shit year for their pets.

My dog Cocoa passed away a few hours ago. She started feeling a little unwell in the middle of October with diarrhea, and it never ended. She lost some weight, but she was eating, and we were making trips to the vet every week monitoring her. She was eating, just not her normal food, blood work was normal. They were concerned, but nothing was being found other than diarrhea. But it seemed like medicine was helping.

Turns out we should have been asking them to do an x-ray because they found a tumor on Monday when she just suddenly got worse Sunday morning after not having medicine for a day.

Wednesday she couldn't really walk far, and this morning she couldn't stand. We went to the vet, they gave her an IV, checked on her, told us there might not be more than a few weeks, but we figured out a plan to try and build up her strength to have surgery for the tumor. We brought her home, and 3 hours later she suddenly couldn't breath, and was gone.

And now we're explaining loss to our 6 year old.
Fucking sucks.

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:

I’m helping a friend move today, and there are a few items that need more height than a car has. So I rented a Suzuki Carry for a day. It’s ¥8800 for 24 hours. Not cheap.

The biggest complaint is always these are one size fits most. And I’m at the end of the range. The rental agent laughed at how I had to get out and slide my left leg in first.

This is my most common mistake traveling outside of Japan. I keep trying to drive my rental from the passenger seat.

I needed some snow tires for this weekend, and as I honestly have almost no need for them living in Osaka; I went the used route. This led me to the nearest UpGarage which is only about 6km from me, but the nearest bridge across the river is about 8km up river. So a 10 minute drive turns into 30 minutes.

I found these Blizzaks on rims for ¥24,000 or about $200 including the tax and installation. It says balancing as well, but since they are used on rims already who knows.

Installation took about 40 minutes. The “technician” verified torque on all studs with me before I left. The tires may be 4 years old, I can’t quite tell from Google translate if it’s the rubber or the rim, but they aren’t being sold as junk, so there is a 1 week guarantee which will cover the trip to Nagano this weekend, and driving on them for 3 days before putting 600km on them will give a chance for problems to happen before the trip.

They carry a lot of used things inside their shop: tires, motorcycle parts, tools, bicycles, riding gear, car parts, etc…

They have a lot of junk and a lot of good stuff.

So I'm gonna get in trouble with my wife. I was on Amazon to find a bread knife and kitchen scissors that hav black handles, and you know how the home page shows you items you might be interested in based on your past purchases...well, there was a LEGO Countach there...and it looked really cool...and I finished the last LEGO car I had...

So I ordered it along with the knives.

She's gonna be slightly annoyed. Oh well.

I’m not sure Porsche made a GT3 with those dimensions.

Found this at the mall today:

Quite the rare vehicle here.

@svend said in Sponsored ads, grrrr:

Glanced at jalopnik early.

I see your first mistake.

Today, I went with my son and some friends to a popular Momiji (Japanese Maple) viewing area in Kyoto. I could dump a ton of photos from trying out an old Sony Cybershot, but I'll limit it to the cars I thought would be interesting to you for the moment.
Someone really has a problem with a ring, or their keys!

I thought this van trying to hide under the momiji was cool.

oooooh...pretty!

Security!

@Just-Jeepin bait

I think the Alto could have gotten a little closer.

Proof they do sell colors in Japan.

Sorry, not fast enough focusing.

Mini!

I took lots of photos of the area (Bamboo Forest, "Kimono Forest", river, paths, etc.) and I will probably post a few of those a little later.

@TheJWT Expo park is about 40 minutes by train for me. I’ll probably see about going there.

@TheJWT Feb.5th in Osaka?

@TheJWT I have a weird fascination with their cars. It’s amazing how they can fit things together well, and at the same time make it look wrong with the original parts.
Speaking of car modifications- are you going to make it up here in a couple weeks for the Auto Messe Show?
https://www.automesse.jp/

Spotted at Konan:

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@TheJWT MF! ;not you just wish I’d known about this.) When was this? I would totally have spent a Man on crossing the bridge to see all those onions.

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.