Chris Zell quoted someone:
"However, the fact is that as cars get older, Sha'ken [car inspection] becomes more and more expensive.
It doesn't seem to be a problem with anyone I know.
Eventually, if the car stops running well or reaches a certain age (even though it's still a good car), you may have to pay a fee just to get rid of it.
Out in the countryside they often haul old cars up into the hills and use them for storage or a chicken house.
Things are laid back in the countryside. There are quite a number of unlicensed cars running around on the islands on the Inland Sea, often driven by 12-year-old kids. Sometimes drunk 12-year-old kids, according to one I know who did that 40 years ago . . . When the cops come around, they hide the cars in the hills to avoid paying the tag fee or getting them inspected.
This is the reason why there are so few older cars in Japan.
Maybe its just me, but see them everywhere in Yamaguchi, including a 1960s Volkswagon beetle that a friend of mine used to drive, years ago. (Probably gone by now.) One wheel fell off the road into a ditch, which often happens out there. We got out, picked it up, and put it back. Those cars are lighter than you would think!
The other day, another friend of mine got into a fender-bender accident with some American servicemen smack dab in the middle of nowhere. He called his mother on the cell phone and asked her to bring his driver's license and registration papers before the cop showed up, which she did. The cop came, by and by, and asked him to interpret Japanese to English. He said, "Would that be proper? I'm involved in the accident." The cop and the Americans agreed it didn't matter.
As I said, things are laid back in the countryside, and also in academic nuclear laboratories, in my experience. A Japanese physicist friend of mine once watched a video I made at the U. Osaka linear accelerator, Takahashi's lab. He paused after watching it, looked at me, and said, "Well, I guess you don't plan to have any more kids . . . I hope your gonads are intact." They tore down the nuclear engineering department at Hokkaido U., Mizuno's lab, a couple of years ago. It was on the verge of falling down on its own. They got halfway through and declared it a nuclear waste zone, and had to pay a fortune to decontaminate it and finish the job.
When cars hit about 60,000 kilometers (maybe 40,000 miles), people start to get rid of them. You'll find very few cars on the road with more than 100,000 kilometers (66,000 miles).
I haven't checked to odometer but given the short distances I doubt our old car has gone that far. My Geo Metro has gone ~40,000 miles in 15 years.
- Jed
