Chris’s Blog

I have finally gotten around to writing about our new car. We decided it would be better to get a new one, and not continue spending money on repairing the old Volkswagen Jetta. It took a while to convince my wife, but after a few months of subconscious nagging and a ‘well timed’ breakdown with the Jetta power windows, she finally gave in.

Luckily we purchased the car in time to qualify for the ‘Eco’ discount that the Japanese government was wasting money on to help out the environment. Unfortunately, the other discount you get when disposing of an older vehicle didn’t apply as we hadn’t had ownership of the vehicle for more than a year (would have been a further 150,000 yen discount)

After visiting a few car dealers we decided that we both really liked the Nissan X-Trail. It is a fairly simple vehicle, 4×4 and was barely within our price range. We bought the vehicle just around the time when a new model was about to be announced, meaning we managed to get a significant discount. Only 9 kilometers on the clock! (Factory testing etc)

After picking and choosing from all the options, it ended up costing around 2,700,000 yen. I am really looking forward to getting a decent set of stud-less tires and heading up the mountains this snowboarding season. Heated Seats!

Here she is:

And here is my sub-woofer.  Note – you wont be able to hear the low frequencies due to the camera microphone.

I recently signed up for a gym (Central sports – more about that later) and outside is a RC course. Afterwards, on my way home – I noticed that there were a few people using the course. It might be common / easy, but this is the first time I have seen anyone drift a remote controlled car.