The shaken: a motoring scourge in Japan
First off, I must apologise if this blog entry doesn’t immediately appear perfect. I am using different software (namely the Scribefire plugin for Firefox) to blog this time. The reason being that my work laptop died over the winter break and so I decided to put a new operating system on here called Ubuntu. I can’t use my old software so am looking around for a decent alternative. Let me know if there are any problems in how this looks.
Right, formalities out of the way so onto business. If you ask someone in Japan what is the worst thing about car ownership in Japan you will probably get a mixture of responses. “Drunken old guys driving into you”, “road surfaces being made partly from coral and offering no grip” and, “the accident insurance system where you are almost always held to partial blame for an accident for existing (friend hit side-on by a Japanese guy in a carpark has been told that they expect him to pay 50% of the costs to repair his own car; if he hadn’t have been in the carpark the accident would never have happened” are just three of them. But maybe the most common complaint people will have is something called the shaken, or JCI (Japanese Compulsory Insurance) for those US servicemembers and families with SOFA status.
Almost every developed country has some system of ensuring cars are roadworthy. In the UK they have the annual MOT - a comprehensive check of the vehicle to make sure it is safe to be on the road. Well here in Japan we have the shaken, which is conducted on all vehicles every 2 years. The testing process appears similar to that of the UK, although probably not quite as detailed. Some of the things it checks are sensible (working headlights, exhaust emissions etc), and some are not. The car, for example, must have some way of telling the driver which position the gearstick must be in for each particular gear in a manual transmission car. Stock gearknobs have this but if you have an aftermarket gearknob then you have to get a sticker somewhere visible in the interior, seemingly in case you forget where all your gears are and need a diagram to help you out (hint: if this applies to you then please stay at home or use public transport!).
But it’s not the testing criteria that most people take issue with. In fact, even a lot of tuner’s cars pass the shaken relatively easily, and I think mine will pass without any problems providing I re-install the cat and get that all-important gear sticker. But the biggest problem is the cost. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am expecting my shaken fee in a couple of months to come to at least Y50,000 (about 300 quid) and probably closer to Y70,000 (500 quid), and that’s providing nothing needs repairing or changing. Jay from over at Newzjapan commented that his shaken is likely to cost around Y120,000 (just over 850 quid). Wikipedia has the cost broken down as follows: Y25,500 for the testing fee, Y29,780 for 2 years of validity (yup, I’m not sure what that means either), Y8,090 to be given to the recycling department, and then an additional fee depending on who your mechanic is, what your car is and probably the phase of the moon or something like that. Let us just compare that firstly to the US, where the same car would cost about Y11,000 to test (around 80 quid) and in the UK an MOT test costs Y7,400 (just over 50 quid). Yes… as you can see the difference is not insignificant. But everyone just accepts the cost because they know that here if they speak up they will have a lonely voice as acceptance is the most popular policy.
When you tell people outside of Japan the test cost they automatically assume that is going through a car dealership, and that an independent garage fee would be much cheaper. The reality is that the costs I am quoting come from independent garages in Okinawa (which probably has the cheapest prices for things like this in all of Japan). A dealership fee for something like this is likely to be even higher. Maybe you are starting to see why public transport is so favourable in mainland Japan (where it actually functions adequately). It is possible for you to go to the car inspection centre and test the car yourself but the cost you will save is nominal and it’s a lot of hassle so people don’t really do it and leave it to their mechanic.
So while Japan does have some good points for motoring (stock parts at decent prices, good quality aftermarket parts, reasonably priced petrol), there are one or two things that crop up that really put a proverbial spanner in the works. I’ve got my shaken coming up in March which I’m not looking forward to financially, although it should be a simple pass through for the test itself. Should probably make some witty pun about being “shaken but not stirred”, but I would never stoop to that kind of level!
The car’s down… the car’s up!!!
A Happy New Year to you all, first and foremost. Wishing you much success, happiness and good stuff like that in 2009. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read my ramblings in the past 12 months and especially to those who left comments. I’ve said it before, but comments on my little rants and reviews make me want to write more. Whether or not that is a good thing is completely up to you!
Before I get into the main part of this article, I was reading on Newzjapan the other day about news articles that you would think are big national stories, but then rarely get reported. The story in question in this particular article was about a man in Kobe murdering his pregnant girlfriend and then putting her body in a freezer. Now there has been a lot of information on this story and it has been reported locally, but you would expect that it would be a big story that would be on all the news stations. However, it didn’t make any ripples in the media outside Hyogo. It could have been the sheer number of huge news stories breaking in Japan that day… I mean the top crime story was about a Waseda student stealing a woman’s underwear (living in Japan for a while makes you wonder why this is even being reported as news as it’s so commonplace). But why didn’t this story make headlines outside the immediate Hyogo area as it seems like a big crime? Similarly, on December 20th a man’s torso was found in a rural area of Okinawa. The body parts had been put into 6 plastic bags and put in holes in the ground, the killer leaving behind suitcases, a pickaxe and shovels. In addition, one of the arms was still missing. This story was reported in the Okinawan news the day after it was found, but since then nothing at all has been reported in the media. There’s been nothing about an appeal, no identification of the body, no more reports from police about clues they have found. And this was never mentioned in national news bulletins when you would think that body parts being found in a field might be newsworthy. Am going to go out on a limb here (pun intended), but I reckon that if the shovels were US military issue then there would be a lot more coverage of this. It could be that the media just does not want to worry the Japanese public as revealing to them that the country they live in might not be as safe as they thought could shock them hugely.
Anyway, onto what I was intending to write about…
2009: Resolutions of the New Year variety
Well Santa Claus has been and gone (and he made a visit to my school even, as the photo to the right testifies), and he has been pretty kind as always to me this year. But Christmas Day has been and gone and in 2 days a brand new year starts. So I thought it would be appropriate to think about some New Years resolutions (not sure what my fascination is about writing New Years with uppercase first letters; maybe finding out should be resolution number one). So let’s start thinking about the future, or “Let’s enjoying the future thinking together” as my students would undoubtedly say.
1. Continue my quest to be more popular than the incumbent Japanese Prime Minister - Currently I think I’m right on target with this one, having read that the current PM, Taro Aso, now has an approval rating of 21%. That probably puts him on a par with Hitler, Mugabe and GW Bush. If my own personal popularity meter drops below that then I know I’m in trouble. I just have to hope the election which will inevitably be called in 2009 doesn’t bring someone to power with a personality and some policies that are marginally different from what the LDP has, or I’ll be in trouble.
2. Sort my life out - Important one now. 2009 is going to mean a lot of decisions for me, and probably some of the biggest of my life are going to have to be made in the next month or so. I’m not overwhelmed with joy that I’m going to be entering the job market at what is the worst time in a generation. I’ve got a few choices about what I should do but I have to come to a firm decision in the next month so it’s not just on my mind all the time. Have been thinking about it now for the past couple of months and it’s just slowly building up. No doubt once 2009 comes and my contract ending is only 8 months away it will get even bigger.
3. Get into the ocean more - This is one that I know one particular reader of this site will appreciate. I’ve been out of the water for probably the most time since I’ve come to Japan and I really need to make up for it in 2009. It could be my last year in Okinawa and I want to make the most of my time living in one of the best diving spots in Asia. The car has taken up a lot of my time and money this year, and I have reaped some rewards in the form of a very quick car and a trophy sitting on my TV collecting dust (don’t worry mother, I’ll do the dusting in 2009!) but it has been at the expense of doing something else I love. Will try to get into the water at least once a weekend if at all possible
4. Make the most of every day - This links in with the previous 3 actually. I keep looking as 2009 as potentially the last year I will spend in Okinawa. I sincerely hope that is the case, but have to be prepared in case it is. So I need to make the most of every lesson at school, of every time I go to Starbucks and buy vastly overpriced coffee, and of every dive. If I can do that then I’ll end my contract here on August 1st as a happy person.
Not hugely looking forward to 2009, but there’s no doubting it’s going to be a pivotal year for me. Finally, thanks to everyone who took the time to read articles in my blog, from the US military lockdown, to yet another Prime Minister in Japan, to the exploits with my car. Every reader and comment you make is valued, so thank you for making them, and I wish you all a happy and successful 2009.
Ai Iijima death: predicted 3 years ago?
This is a rather spooky update I have just read on another excellent Japan commentary page, NewzJapan. Now I’m not a big believer of these fortune tellers, but Ai visited one in Taiwan in 2005 and the fortune teller informed her that she would die 3 years later. She joked about what they said on the TV show and even said to the camera, “Maybe you can use this video three years from now!” That’s the kind of thing that sends a brief shiver down your spine and gets you thinking a little.
Anyway, I don’t steal people’s thunder so go see what NewzJapan has to say about it. I will include the video below though so you can see for yourself.
Christmas holiday is back on the menu!
Well, after a bit of a shock yesterday being told that for the first time in 5 years I wasn’t going to be able to have any sort of winter holiday, normal service has been resumed I am happy to report. I approached my supervisor at work again about it and she just said straight “Ah yes, next week is holiday” and wondered why I had been worried. Maybe I’m just going senile in my old age and imagining that she’d said just 24 hours previously that I was going to get no winter holiday of any sort this year.
What it does mean is that from December 29th to January 5th I am off work. Inevitably this will mean days of boredom, waiting for Judge Judy to come on AFN (yes, it has come to this!) and trying to sort my life out (will mention more about that in my new years resolutions post to come. But I’m marginally more happy now, which is always a good thing!