Seeing as this is a weekend entry, I think I'll just talk about some random stuff. I'll continue with China during the week.

Firstly, last weekend was a good weekend. One reason was this...
The English soccer team that I support (Spurs) won their first trophy in about 8 years, beating arch rivals Arsenal in the semis then slightly less arch rivals Chelsea in the final. This was after an up and down season in which the manager was fired and a new manager was brought in. Obviously the new manager is doing a good job because he's only been there for a few months and he's already won some silverware.

A few weeks ago I went to Sapporo for a birthday getaway weekend. While I was there I did some shopping. I had a chance to go to the new Costco warehouse and stock up on some food items. In case you don't know, Costco is a big, American, wholesale type supermarket, which looks like this:

You have to be a member to get in and membership costs about $50 (ouch). But, once you're a member, you can shop there for a year and you can bring up to 3 friends with you. The best thing about shopping at Costco is that you can get lots of stuff that just isn't available at regular Japanese supermarkets. The downside is that you have to buy in bulk. There are no small sizes of anything. I ended up spending quite a bit of money but I was able to save lots in the process. For example, during winter I have the same breakfast every weekday - hot oatmeal with fruit (berries or a banana). If I buy oatmeal at a regular supermarket it's pretty expensive. A 300g box costs a little over 300yen. At Costco, I was able to buy two 4kg boxes for a total of about 2,400 yen, saving about 75% in the process. I really like Costco, it's just unfortunate that it's so far away (over 3 hours by car). One interesting thing I noticed in Costco was that Japanese people have trouble wheeling around the massive western style shopping trolleys they have there. At supermarkets in Japan, people usually just use a basket, or if they have lots of things they can get a mini trolley like thing that can hold two baskets. At Costco there were trolley jams caused by people stopping in the middle of aisles or randomly leaving their trolley in a stupid place. It was actually pretty frustrating, so hopefully they'll have gotten better by the next time I go there.

Another bit of shopping I did was at a used car parts shop. There's a nationwide chain of shops that sell decent used tuning parts like wheels, exhausts, turbos, intercoolers, blowoff valves, stereos, navigation systems etc. I usually drop in when I'm in a city that has one of these shops. For ages I've been keeping my eye out for a new exhaust for my car. There's nothing really wrong with my current exhaust:

I just thought it would be nice to have a bigger, cooler, slightly growlier and more intimidating one. Finally, during my birthday trip I found a Trust Power Extreme II catback exhaust that was in great condition, fit my car and was relatively inexpensive. I figured it would be the perfect birthday present for myself (something I wanted but didn't really need) so I got it. Last Sunday I spent a few hours installing it and now I have a nice new exhaust that looks cool, sounds cool and adds a handful of horsepower.

I installed it on Sunday, and it was actually my third attempt at putting it in. The first attempt was the Monday after I got it. I had a few hours spare after work and I thought I'd get under the car and see how hard it was going to be to get the old exhaust off. After half an hour of trying to get the rusted bolts off the old one, I gave up and decided to try again later in the week. So, on Thursday afternoon I went to the local hardware shop (yes, surprisingly, my town actually has a small hardware shop) and picked up a can of the Japanese equivalent of WD-40, which is called CC-20 or something like that. I gave the bolts a nice coat of CC-20, let it soak in, then had another go at getting them off. This time I was actually able to loosen them a little, before I had to call it a day because of bad light and freezing temperatures. One of the great things about where I live now is that I have my own garage. Actually, since my neighbour doesn't have a car I can use her half two so it's really a double garage. Unfortunately though, there are some problems. First, the lighting is terrible. I have to work with the garage doors open just to be able to see anything. Once the sun started to go down it was just too dark to work. Second, the garage has concrete floors, concrete walls and acts like a freezer. If it's -10 outside, then it's usually about -20 in the garage. This leads to another problem. When I park my car, the snow and ice that has collected under the car and in the wheel wells melts. Then, during the night it freezes, which means the floor of my garage gets covered in ice. This is a big problem, not just because it is damn cold when I lie down on it, but because it's probably not a good idea to be working under a car that has been jacked up on a patch of ice.

So, for my third attempt, I decided to stop doing it half-arsedly and do a proper job. I waited until Sunday, when I knew I would have a whole day free, and I did some shopping on Saturday afternoon. I picked up a decent halogen worklight so that I could actually see what I was doing, got another pair of jack stands to go with the two I already had, and a few other odds and ends that would make my job easier. Once again, the major problem was the cold. I was rugged up in thermals, a jumper, work overalls and some work gloves, but my hands would get so cold I had to stop every few minutes to war them up. Despite this, the third attempt was much more successful. I gave up on separating the two parts of the old exhaust and just pulled them off together. The only real problem was getting the muffler off the three rubber hangers that hold it on. I spent about half an hour pulling, pushing, wedging, prying and using brute force with no luck. Finally, in a moment of genius, I sprayed them with some good old CC-20 and they slipped right off with almost no effort. Wish I'd thought of that earlier. Anyway, getting the new one on was no problem (except that the old bolts to join the end pipe and the mid pipe didn't fit the new exhaust - I had to go MacGyver a solution using bolts from my apartment) and sugery was a complete success. Here are some photos from the operation:

Hope those little red stands really can hold my car up.


Look at all the ice and snow under there.


The old thin, curvy exhaust and the new straight beefy one.


It started snowing so I had to shut the doors.

The finished result:
Like most Japanese aftermarket exhausts it sticks out at a slight angle (left and up), almost looking straight at you when you walk up behind the car. I think it looks better, and it definitely sounds pretty cool. It's certainly not LOUD, but it's powerful and deep enough.

Finally, in other news, I was reading The Age website a few weeks ago and I read a story about the Underbelly tv show that was banned in Melbourne. Seeing as I hadn't seen any Australian tv in over a year and there were no good movies out at the moment, I decided to get the first two episodes off the internet. I have to say, Underbelly is a really great program. I can't remember the last Australian made tv show that I watched and thought was actually decent. When I was back in Aus last time, tv was dominated by reality garbage and dodgy serials with crappy budgets and even worse acting. In contrast, Underbelly seems to have a reasonable budget and some decent acting, with a great mix of familiar faces that have appeared on Aussie tv over the past 20 years or so. Some of the characters are great (...some are a little stupid) and the stories are good too. Sometimes it's very dark and serious (like the Godfather), and at other times it's dark but a little more comedic (kind of like Goodfellas). Interestingly, the mix actually works. I've watched the first nine episodes and I'm looking forward to the rest. Probably the most enjoyable part of watching the show is seeing all the Melbourne locations - "Hey, look, a tram!", "Hey, I've been there!", "I remember that restaurant!", stuff like that.

That's all for now.