Holy crap - a new blog entry!

Yeah, it's been a while, but I've been busy. Late October through to the end of November is always the busiest time of the year. I've had so many things on that it's hard to remember everything.

My blog entry left was just before the school festival. The festival was a success and our band's performance was pretty good too. Smoke on the Water went down particularly well with the crowd. The 2 sax girls that joined the band were so nervous that they could hardly play a proper note and when they could get a note out it was often the wrong one, but they weren't miked up so it didn't really affect the performance. It was a good experience for them, even though they broke down crying afterwards from the pressure. Overall, it was a good day.

Sometime back in Spetember the 'shaken' was due for my car. 'Shaken' literally means 'car check' and its a roadworthy check that has to been done every two years. It's a very strict test and it's very expensive, which is one of the reasons that new cars are much more popular than old cars in Japan. Once a car reaches a certain age, the shaken check becomes more expensive than the value of the car, so people often give away or wreck their old cars once the shaken period is up. Shaken is another one of those interesting Japanese processes that is considered 'a safety necessity', but is really just a way of making money for various groups. For 99% of people, shaken works like this: your shaken period is about to expire, you take your car to a local service station or garage, they check the car, make any necessary repairs, take it off to the testing centre, do all the paperwork and pay all the fees, they return the car to you, you pay a large fee (on average anywhere from 120,000 yen upwards plus any repair costs), and the result is you can drive a safe car legally for the next two years.

However, there is another option. It's called 'user shaken' and it basically means you can do most of it yourself. This option is much cheaper, though it requires some spare time and some car knowledge. Interestingly only about 1% of people choose this option.

If you go through a garage you have to pay all the required fees (shaken test fee, 2 years compulsory insurance and weight tax), as well as a fee that the garage takes for doing the jobs, plus replacement parts and repairs that the garage deems necessary. Basically, they can do whatever they like to your car and charge you for it. If you do a user shaken you only have to pay the required fees plus whatever you think needs to be repaired or replaced. This usually works out as a saving of about 60% or more.

Anyway, I had some spare time and I wanted the experience so I decided to try a user shaken. Besides, I take good care of my car, I know what's right and what's wrong with it. I didn't really want someone else messing with it and I certainly didn't want them replacing things that didn't need to be replaced. So, I scoured the internet for information and made a booking at the shaken testing centre. Before I took it to the centre, I had to complete a 60 point safety check. This check is interesting because it's a real grey area. You are required to submit the check with all your paperwork, but they don't really look at it. As long as it's included then it's sufficient. Interestingly, there is no official check sheet. I used the one out of my user manual and it was fine. Most of the things on the sheet were standard stuff like checking fluid levels, checking brake pad wear, looking for hose leaks etc. Some of them like checking exhaust emission levels and proper wheel alignment were obviously impossible for me to do properly, so I just wrote on the sheet that those test were 'incomplete' and that seemed to suffice.

The next day I went off to the shaken testing centre. The centre is usually busy and at times it can be hard to get a booking, but as it was a Tuesday there were very few people there. I had made a booking for the 2nd session (there are two in the morning and two in the afternoon), so that I had plenty of time to come back and re-test later in the day if my car failed something. I arrived about 30 mins early so that I would have plenty of time to fill out all the paperwork. I went into the office and told the guy that I wanted to do a user shaken and this was my first time, so it would be much appreciated if he helped me out. The guy gave me a strange look. There were two reasons for this. One - it is fairly unusual for people to come in and do a user shaken (all the other people I saw that day were mechanics from garages and sevice stations). Two - it was even more unusual for a foreigner to do a user shaken. He looked a little concerned, so he gave me a sheet of paper, pointed out a few things and asked me if I could read it. I took a look at it and told him it was fine. I could read most of it and I could understand all the difficult bits. After this he was much happier to help me. This is a situation that I have encountered many times. Many foreigners here rely on native Japanese to help them through difficult processes like shaken, getting a license, opening a bank account, signing contracts for various things etc. I prefer to do all these things myself. Japanese people can often be apprehensive in these situations as they are used to dealing with only Japanese people only. It's not racism or anything like that, it's simply that they are concerned about problems arising from not being able to communicate effectively. Basically, they are worried about making mistakes. However, once you show that communication is not a problem then they are usually more than happy to help.

Anyway, I filled out some forms, went across the road to another building to pay for something, came back, filled out more forms, went to another building... etc, etc (Japanese people love putting each department in a separate area and making you visit each place in turn).

Finally, it was time for the test. I lined up in front of a big three-lane shed that was about 100 metres long. There were a few other cars, a truck and some motorbikes. As I said before, all the other people there were proper mechanics.

As I sat in the car one of the testers came up to me. He took my forms and asked me if it was my first time. I said 'yep' so he asked me to keep on my hazard lights for the whole process. I guess this was a warning for everyone else to 'watch out for the noob' as I was the only person who had to do it. He then had me turn on all my lights one by one 'brake... tail... left indicator... right indicator...'. He asked me to pop the hood and poked around in the engine bay a little. He stuck his head inside the car and checked a few things. Finally, he wandered around the car tapping the wheel nuts with a long metal hammer. All the time he was making notes on his check sheet.

Next, he told me to drive forward into the shed. From here my memory is a little hazy but I'm pretty sure there were four stops in the shed. At each stop one or more things were tested. At one stop the wheel alignment was tested as well as a side slip test. I'm not really sure how that worked but a green light told me it was all ok. Next I had to drive up on some rollers. The wheels were locked in place and a seonsor popped out in front of the car. The guy told me to speed up to exactly 40kmh and then flash my lights. This was a little weird at first. I was revving up, changing gears and my speedo told me I was going 40 but I wasn't actually moving anywhere. After a little while I was able to hold it at 40 and I flashed my lights. The sensor thought about it for a while then flashed green. Pass. Next, the brake test, where I had to apply my brakes, then my hand brake while the rollers tried to move the wheels. Green. Pass. Next, I moved off the rollers and stopped in front of another sensor. This one checked the height of my lights. This is the test that many cars fail as the beams are required to be very accurate. Too high, too low, of centre or off colour results in a fail. Fortunately I got a green. Next I drove over an open bay. A mechanic went down under my car and started looking at thing and tapping things with his hammer (geez, they love tapping things with that hammer). The whole time I could see what he was doing through a closed circuit video. Finally, the tester came up and had me put a probe into my tailpipe. The probe tested for proper exhaust emission levels. This was one of the few tests that I was concerned about, not because I thought my car had bad emissions but simply because it was one of the few things I couldn't check myself. The machine thought for a while then a green light came on. Sweet. My tester filled in a few things on the test sheet then came over to give me my results.

'Okay, this time through was a FAIL'.

WTF?

Actually, I wasn't that surprised because I had been peeking at his sheet and had noticed a few suspicious red circles. Fortunately, there were only two points I failed. 1) one of the bulbs on my rear number plate lights had blown and 2) I didn't have any markings on my gear stick to show the gear change pattern (first gear is top left, second is bottom left etc.). Phew! Both these things were easy to fix, so I went off and got a replacement bulb and a sticker for my gear lever, changed the bulb, stuck the sticker and took it back to the testing centre. Surprisingly, the centre is very sensible when it comes to failing a test. If you fix things and come back the same day, not only do you not have to pay extra, and not only do you not have to retake the test, but you get to cut in front of everyon else who has yet to take their test. They just check that you fixed the things you had to fix and stamp your sheet PASS. So, I went off and did what I had to do, and 20 minutes later I was done. Back to the office, more forms, pay some money, change buldings, pay some money and then I was done. May car is now legally drivable for the next two years, and its value has now more than doubled.

What happened next? Hmm... In mid-October the local volleyball tournament began. The tournament is held twice a year and usually involves 7 or 8 games over a two week period. I play with the junior-high school team. When we first started our team sucked big time. Now, with a few new players in and some occasional training sessions, our team is one of the best in our league. In fact, this tournament we finished equal second. We only lost two games. One was against the team who was demoted from the top grade after the last tournament. They are a really, really good team (they should really be in the top grade), and we only just lost (25-21 in the final set). The other game we lost was the one game I couldn't play. Oh well.

The reason I couldn't play that game was because on that night I was doing 'Jonathan's Cooking Class'. A few times a year I'm asked to do conversation classes for the adults in my town. Generally it's easy and it's fun (though sometimes it can be a pain). Usually I do 4 nights of conversation classes over two weeks. This time I was schedued to do 3 conversation nights and one cooking class. Why a cooking class? Well, apparently it is a point of interest among the locals that not only can I cook, but I cook basically every night. They decided that they wanted to see t for themselves, so someone had the idea of me doing a cooking class instead of the usual Japanese lady who does a cooking class every month or so. I actually thought it would be a good break from doing conversation classes so I was happy to do it. I was expecting about 8 or 10 people to sign up but in the end there were about 20 people plus a bunch of kids. It was suggested that we cook some 'traditional Australian food'. What the hell is traditional Australian food? Kangaroo steaks? Witchedygrubs? I don't know, so I decided to find something that I could call Australian, something that tasted good, but also involved some proper hands on cooking. In the end I decided on an ambitious two course meal of 'Australian Pizza' (ie. pizza) and pavlova. Both these dishes involve lots of hands on work (so that everyone feels like they are doing something productive), but can also produce impressive results. However, there were plenty of difficulties to overcome. First, I had a 500yen/person budget. Second, I had a 1.5 hour time limit and pavolva generally takes at least twice that time to cook. Third, the cooking room I was using had 5 microwave ovens, which meant that they could work in groups of about 4 or 5 (perfect). However, both pizza and pavlova need oven time, so I had to work out how they could both get enough oven time within the time limit. In the end, I came up with some recipes that I could adjust to fit within the time constraints. The pizzas turned out really good and the pavlovas were also surprisingly good (though limited cooking time meant they couldn't get a nice hard shell). Everybody had a great time and although we went over time (by about an hour... whoops), the class was a big success.

Around the same time I was doing volleyball, cooking classes and conversation classes, I also had an annual basketball tournament to attend. I've talked about this tournament in previous blogs, so if you're really interested you can go back and re-read what I have written. Briefly, it's a tournament for public officials working in two areas in Hokkaido. There are about 16 teams split into two grades. A grade is made up of teams that play regular games and train weekly. B grade is a mix of teams that play and train regularly, and teams that just play in the tournament (like our team). This year was very busy so we didn't have much time for practice. In fact, this year I put in a total of about 30 mins practice in the weeks leading up to the tournament. This year the tournament was in a town about two and a half hours away. I won't talk to much about the tournament because it was very, very average. We weren't great, but we weren't awful. We won the first game on Saturday then lost the next game on Sunday (actually, this was the first time we had one a game in the last three years). I top scored on both days (22 and 16, I think). My 3 point shooting was good on Sat but crappy on Sun. I was picked on by a ref on Saturday and almost fouled out (for the first time ever), but managed to finish the game with four fouls. Overall, it was fun, but I was pretty tired from recent activities so it wasn't quite as good as it could have been.

What else... I mentioned that I had to do conversation classes in my town, and for the first time I also had to do some conversation classes in the other town that I work in. Since they found out about a year and a half ago that I was doing classes in my town, they have been saying that they were going to schedule some classes in their town. For whatever reason they kept forgetting or puting it off. Finally they decided to schedule two nights of classes right in the middle of my busy period. Great... Actually, they were pretty good and the students were all very enthusastic, so they were easy to teach.

Last week there was a mini volleyball tournament. I think I've talked about mini volleyball before. It's basically volleyball played on a badminton sized court, with a badminton net and an inflatable ball and teams of 4 players. It's a fun sport and it's quite popular here because it can be played by people of all ages and all abilities. For these last few months I've been playing one evening a week with some of the teachers and parents at one of my schools. It's the kind of sport that is very simple and very easy to play, but if you practice enough you can learn some really tricky things. Because the ball is inflatable, there are certain techniques that can make the ball move in unexpected ways. By putting the right amount of spin on it and hitting it at the right angle, you can make shots that are almost impossible to return.

Anyway, I was recriuted into the board of education team. My team was pretty good, though we stuck to a rotation policy which meant there was always at least one player on the court who was 'not really the sporting type' (ie. an unco). Despite that we were able to win all our qualifying matches, the quarter final, the semi final and were even able to defeat the reigning champions in the final. The reigning champions are a team of +50 year old ladies who, if you met them on the street, would seem like your average, nice group of ladies. But don't let that fool you. When they step on the court they are all business - they even have uniforms. Black shirts, black shorts, black elbow and knee pads (really... it's like wearing pads for a game of table tennis...), black knee high socks and black shoes. When they enter the gym there is a hush among the crowd and if you listen hard enough you can almost hear 'We Will Rock You' being played in the background. In fact, this team went to the All-Japan Mini Volleyball tournament in Okinawa last year won that, so, technically, they are the Japanese champions. In other words, it was nice to beat them. I would like to say it was all due to my magnificent skills but it wasn't really (although I did hold my own). There was one guy on our team who had been playing since he was a little kid. Everytime we got into trouble he would pull out his super serve that was almost impossible to receive. It was so good that this guy basically won the tournament by himself. Anyway, as I said, it was nice to win. Afterwards our team ended up going out with the black team. The black team is going back to the all-Japan tournament next year and they want me to join their team so that they can join the International League (apparently all you need is one foreigner to qualify). Really, I don't know what they are on about though. All-Japan I can understand, but an International League for a sport that's played in one country by only a handful of people? Whatever. It's like America calling their baseball the World Series and their champions the World Champions even though no other country is invited.

Next... a few weeks ago I was finally able to go to Rally Japan. It's something I've been wanting to do every year but I've never been able to get time off. This year the rally was moved to Sapporo which is much more convenient for me, and it happened to coincide with one of the few free weekends I had. So, I booked a ticket and went off to watch the rally. I remember going to watch the Alpine rally around Bright as a child. We'd drive up, park the car in the bushes, watch the cars, play around, then go home. This was definitely a different experience. Even though there are lots of stages, only a few were open to the public, and for those you had to buy a very expensive ticket. I got a ticket for the Super Special Stage inside the Sapporo dome. It was really interesting and certainly more comfortable than standing outside in the cold, but it was also over very quickly. The WRC teams (6 teams?) each did a lap, then changed courses for another lap, then it was done. The rest of the evening was the privateers going round the course, which was still good but definitely less exciting. The course was run on polished concrete so there was lots of slipping and sliding. Part of the course also ran outside where it had been raining so this made things even more slippery. It was amazing to watch the precision technique of the drivers. They managed to get up to some very high speeds and still keep the car under control on a very difficult course.

Before the special stage I had time to wander around the service area which was pretty cool. I wanted to see the Subarus return after the afternoon stages so I ended up waiting in front of their service area with about 100 other people. The SSS was due to start at about 6:10PM, and we were all waiting there from about 4:30. By 6:00 the cars still hadn't returned and everyone was pretty pissed off. In the end we all gave up and went into the stadium. The cars arrived just in time for the SSS so I'm assuming they didn't have time to check in to their service area. After the SSS I went back to the service area and it was much more interesting. Cars were being pulled apart and repaired at an amazing pace. The was a particularly interesting commotion around the Subaru WRC garage as Petter Solberg had smashed up the back of his WRX. There were a couple of guys going at it with sledge hammers trying to knock it back into shape while a couple of other guys were replacing the whole rear suspension system. It was also interesting to watch some of the smaller teams as you can get right up next to them, unlike the big teams where you have to watch from about 10 metres away. Overall, it was a pretty good night.

The next day I was thinking about going to watch another stage but the weather wasn't looking to good, so I gave that up. I decided to go shopping at Costco in the morning before going back to my town. By an amazing coincidence, Costco was located right along one of the routes that the drivers take when moving between stages, and I happened to show up just as some of the cars were passing. That was really cool as I could see the cars from much closer up than I could at the service area. I wasn't the only one there either, there were lots of people lingin the route with their cameras.

Here are some of my thoughts from the rally:

I like the new WRX much better now after seeing it race. When it first came out I wasn't convinced by the new hatchback design, but it definitely looks much faster than the old sedan. I still think the EVO X looks better as a road car, but the WRX definiely looks better on the track.

A lot of the privateers were driving EVOs (about 60% or more). EVOs look cool but they sound like awful. Nearly every one of them was backfiring under turbo.

The Suzukis are not cool. They never will be. They look like little bright yellow rats. However, the Suzuki drivers were the only one that were flooring it over the jump in the middle of the SSS, and they were getting much more air than everyone else. For that, I give them a big thumbs up.

Sebastien Loeb is an absolute technician. He thoroughly deserves his world title.

Mikko Hirvonen is kind of like Mika Hakkenen. He's a great driver, but he's just not a very interesting person.

The Subarus were decidedly average this season, but this can be expected from starting with new cars. Hopefully next season they can challenge Ford and Citroen.

Here are some photos:


The Mitsubishi safari car. It's a beast.



A nice EVO X.

The jump.

The SSS.

The empty Subaru garage.

Trying to fix Solberg's car.




One of the Suzukis getting some air.
A close race between Ford and Subaru (Atkinson and Latvala, if I remember correctly).

A Japanese WRX driver outside Costco.
Danny Sordo having trouble seeing over the steering wheel of his C4.
One of the Munchi's Fords.
PG Andersson's Suzuki.
Getting up close with a privateer. Need any help?

I've got lots more photos but I couldn't be bother posting them.

Instead, I'm going to head home. In case you were wondering, it's 4:00pm, pitch black, about -5 degrees outside and there is a good metre or so of snow....