Cars in Japan

I drive a white 1994 Suzuki Alto (I’ll attach a picture later). I purchased it for the equivalent of fifty US dollars. It runs well, seats five, and gets 55 MPG. And it will likely be destroyed in September.

Automobile tax is due every year, and vehicle inspections are valid for two. Automobile tax for a standard car is calculated by its emissions, but one can expect to pay at least $300 USD per year for it. My boss’ van runs about $500 per year.

Car inspections, paid for every two years, cost about $800. They insure that all parts of the car are running well, and take around 20 minutes to complete.

My car is a kei-car. Kei is this kanji 軽, meaning “light.” Kei-cars have yellow license plates, instead of the white license plates for standard cars. Kei’s are defined by their engine size, which periodically expands. They were originally a distinction for defining who paid taxes on vehicles—automobiles were a luxury item, but scooters were generally affordable after the war. Vehicles with engines as small as scooters were exempt from the heavy yearly automobile tax. The size limit of kei engines and vehicles rose, and since becoming large enough for cars, they have expanded regularly. The engine limit is currently 660 cc, but mine is 550 cc. To put this into perspective, a coworker drives a 3.4 liter engine van.

With engines that small, the vehicles can’t help but be fuel-efficient. My car achieves 55 MPG even at its age—it pulls strongly to the left and makes arthritic sounds going up hills. They are also (especially of late) just as easy to drive and just as safe as standard cars.

Kei-cars require $72 of tax per year in my town, but one must still pay for vehicle inspection every other year.

The combination of automobile tax and vehicle inspection fees works to cause a car turnover rate far higher than that of the US. People figure that if they’re going to be paying so much money for a car anyway, it might as well be a good one, and usually get rid of cars around the time that their vehicle inspections expire. The average duration of ownership has gone up since the popping of the economic bubble, but it still doesn’t touch that of the US.

People don’t replace their cars at every two-year cycle, but the two-year cycle does provide a convenient time interval. It’s such a convenient time interval, in fact, that I don’t think it would be an exaggeration at all to describe the vehicle inspection requirement as a billion dollar regulation. The Japanese used car market is constantly glutted with perfectly functional (and relatively new) cars (especially standard white-plate cars), with the result that a. Supply outstrips demand so much that prices are kept low, and b. Serving to decrease supply, older (but still equally functional) cars are regularly scrapped. Kei-cars are peculiarly more resistant to devaluation because of their demand as a cheap vehicle.

All of this puts a lot of money into the hands of automobile makers and takes it out of the pockets of people who can mostly afford it. Although in much of Japan a car is a necessity, most of the taxes can be avoided by driving a kei-car. In addition, creating the kei class ensures a very large group of extremely fuel-efficient cars.

This last aspect is what I am particularly interested in as I look for another car to replace my hot rod (alternately described as a pregnant white lawnmower) whose vehicle inspection period expires in September. As I mentioned, the car regularly gets 55 MPG—although I don’t drive much, this is still an important statistic, not least of all because gasoline is $6/gallon and rising, here.

Introduction

My office is silent, except for the high whir of computer fans and a recorded koto, emanating from speakers in the ceiling which were installed during the bubble economy. I work in a building which was built in 1995, constructed with tax money in a time when it seemed a river which would never run dry. As a result, the building seems awkwardly out-of-place with its surroundings—a concrete mass of hyper-modern architecture, replete with an amphitheatre, Steinway piano, and, of course, these ceiling speakers.

This building, which serves as the “international center” of my town (20,000 and shrinking) has one of three stages in the entire country whose rear wall comprises one enormous window overlooking the sea. I don’t know who collects these statistics. We’ve got a golden stage screen which cost somewhere along the lines of $10,000 US, but alas not much chance to use it. We’ve also got a museum-cum-log cabin, showcasing our relationship with our sister city as well as a bunch of US pilgrim artifacts.

We’ve been ordered to carry home our trash with us. Staple boxes, misprinted pages, disposable chopsticks… Industrial waste removal costs something like $130 US per bag to the local government, but it’s free if they can offload it to neighborhoods. Technically illegal, it’s become permanent temporary policy. I wear two jackets in the winter while sitting at my desk due to heating costs, and our largest event of the year was cut years ago from “International Week” to “International Days.”

For eight months, I’ve been a Coordinator of International Relations here. That pretentious title means that I deal mostly with translation and interpretation for events and concerts. I’m also ostensibly responsible for fostering internationalization, which is the part of my job that I take both the least, and most, seriously; it has become quite clear that my contracting organization has no intention of allowing me that responsibility or any responsibilities which might lead to it directly or indirectly. However, outside of my day job, I work to defeat demons of the public conscience that arise from an intricate symphony of ignorance and misinformation. My medium is almost exclusively personal conversations, although I also teach a class once every two weeks. This medium aided by my ability to have a lot of personal conversations with a veritable cross-section of the populous; I have the mixed blessing of being personally acquainted with company presidents, illegal immigrants, police officers, and yakuza.

I live inside Japan, but largely outside of the public conscience. Indeed, as a foreigner, I will always largely be an outsider. This is one of the reasons that I am able to have conversations with such a diverse sample of Japan – people open up to me because:
a. They think that I’m on the fringes of society, too.
b. They don’t think I’ll be able to tell anybody.
c. Gaijin are cool.

Maybe we can talk more about that last one later. But for now, let it suffice to say that the fact that people open up to me easily (well, relatively) is one of a few tricks that I have that keep me adrift on Japanese society, instead of beached by it or drowned at the bottom. Other tricks include the ability to speak Japanese and a logical, skeptical, and analytical thought process brought to you by the word “why.”
I think the purpose of this blog will be to discuss Japanese culture and its perceptions, inside and outside of Japan.
I won’t pretend to know everything, nor assume to be always right. Just like my life, my knowledge is a work in progress. But as of now, these things I know are true.