Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

An excellent thing has happened.

To KNOW Yongfook is to KNOW that he hates his car. That steaming pile of juddering mechanical dung has carved a niche for itself as the butt of all my jokes, ever. As the months passed, my complete lack of affection for the vehicle started to manifest itself in piles of garbage adorning the back seats and the ongoing internal struggle to not mention just how shit it was in every single diary entry on this website. The car, a Suzuki Alto, was perhaps the most poignant symbol of the kind of annoying JET apathy that now really grates at me, eg. “I’m going home eventually so I don’t need a car that doesn’t completely suck balls” and very soon, this car, this OBJECT OF ULTIMATE CRAPNESS will be REPLACED.

Rewind to a few weeks ago. Taking some blind initiative, which frankly, is dangerous when it involves me and money, I bought the prefectural 2nd hand car magazine. I decided to branch out into a wider area after realising that most of the car dealers in my immediate area are owned by toothless drunk farmers who are just ask likely to sell you a combine harvester or their first-born child as they are a 2nd hand car.

The magazine proved to be very fruitful. I picked a handful of cars and went to look at them. Sure, some of them were lemons and some of the dealers were a little less than honest - imagine if you will my inkan (personal stamp) coming down in slow motion to stamp the contract and suddenly the dealer barks in super fast Japanese “bythewaythecarneedsanewclutchandanewmuffler” - but eventually, I found THE car for me.

WHAT CAR, I hear you cry, with fists shaking in the air like a child who dropped his rusk. Well let me tell you this: I bought a fricking Nissan Skyline R33 GTS.

Oh yes. I should take delivery some time next week.

Anyway, I have added two galleries. The first is of ryumon no taki, from the last diary entry. The second is of my new Junior High School, at their sports day practice. I now go to two Junior High Schools - my original one, and another one about 10 minutes away, which apparently is the smallest (self contained, ie. not affiliated with another larger school) Junior High School in Japan, at a whopping 56 students. Since it is so small, the sports day is a joint affair between the village’s Junior High and Elementary school.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2003 at 5:41 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.