Chris’s Blog

So, a while back we were lucky enough to get a car from my wife’s parents. They bought a new car (Toyota Prius) and were planning on disposing of the old one. Luckily they offered it to us first.

It’s a 1995 Volkswagen Jetta (Vento in Japan). Done around 45,000kms and is in relatively good condition. We flew all the way from Chiba to Wakayama to pick it up and drive it home. The drive was about 8 hours long.

A few days afterwards I noticed the front passenger footwell was soaking wet. Upon removal of the foot mat I was surprised to discover a  large mold patch.

Not sure where the water was coming from I spent the next few days researching the problem online.  The forum at vwvortex was pretty helpful. It seemed to come down to three possible causes. One: The heater core was leaking, Two: Rainwater was leaking in through the drain for the windscreen or Three: The air conditioner drain pipe was blocked.

Long story short, I never did figure out which one was causing the problem, but I did double check the air conditioner pipe was clean, then sealed the area where the pipe goes through the firewall. I also ran sealant along the base of the windscreen. Hasn’t leaked since. The heater core is most likely fine as the water level in the radiator hasn’t dropped.

So after ‘fixing’ the problem, we spend a weekend removing the seats and carpet from the car, replacing the base mat where there was mold, shampooing the carpet and replacing it. Obviously it would have been better to replace the carpet entirely, but for an older car that we will only use for three or so years, its not really worth the effort.

What is worth the effort though is the sound system. I will write about what I have installed in a future post.

Oh, and for those of you who own Volkswagen cars in Chiba – The Chiba-Kita Volkswagen people are really nice. They have reset the car computer, shown me where the air conditioning drain is and checked a few other things for me for free.

Went to Akihabara again today. Turns out they are still selling the Windows 7 burger. Initially they were only going to sell it for seven days.

The Windows 7 Whopper is basically a Whopper with seven pieces of meat. It wasn’t much of a challenge for me, as I have no problem with my usual order of a Double Whopper and two Double BBQ Bacon Cheeseburgers. Surprisingly however, there were at least three other Japanese people eating the burger. One small girl had eaten about a quarter, and seemed to be writing about it in her notebook.
The other two had divided it into two and were eating it with a knife and fork.

Other than the fact that it is the Windows 7 Whopper with seven pieces of meat, there is nothing special about this burger.

Forgive me for the quality of the video. My wife does not know how to set the video quality on her phone.

Tried out the new pressure cooker today. Worked really well. Meat good but a little tough. Not sure if that was me or the meat.

Couldnt find any burger buns

Put spring onion and bacon bits in the potato salad too. Fresh basil to garnish.