My Car

My car finally arrived, finally I have had the chance to experience driving in Japan. More specifically driving in Tokyo.
I had waited for about 4 months to get my car, so as you can probably imagine, when I did finally get it I was pretty darn happy.
In Japan there are many nice cars, infact you could go as far as saying there there are ONLY nice cars in Japan, however I think I have seen one or two old bombs driving around, but still.. most cars are new and in very good condition.
My car stands out though. Inspite of all the flash European cars and wicked Japanese cars, my car gets a lot of looks. Why? Because there are only 2 in Japan. My car is dubbed "the billion dollar baby". That is not because I paid $1bil for it, but Holden, the good old Aussie child of GM spent $1bil designing and developing the Holden Commodore VE series from the ground up. And what a remarkable job they did.
I have the Holden Commodore VE SS-V series. It's a full 6 litre V8 powerhouse. Unfortunately for me, I have yet to give it a real run, as I am still getting used to the dense traffic in Tokyo city.

The warnings:
I had a number of warnings from my collegues at work. "Don't get caught speeding", "Be careful, it's VERY dangerous", "The expressway is really difficult, you will definately get lost" etc etc.
Well, yea they are all right. It is quite dangerous, and getting caught speeding would suck, oh and loosing my way on the expressway, well, it just means I can drive a little longer trying to correct my wrong.. Nothing wrong with that (unless you are in a hurry)

I was really nervous driving here for the first time for a number of reasons. The first being that I hadn't driven a manual in a long time. The second reason being that I hadn't driven in such a big city before (unless you count Auckland as a big city). And the last reason was because I had just got my flash new wheels and didn't want to damage it.

Driving in Tokyo
Driving in Tokyo has been interesting. The main roads are very busy, and people tend to pull in front of you without indicating. I don't know why they even bother putting lines on the road, because half the time there are cars driving right on the line. That said, driving on the main roads is pretty easy and although there are some sudden forks which will take you miles in the wrong direction if you aren't in the right lane by the time you get to them, getting around is quite straight forward. Traffic is quite heavy in the late afternoon and early evening. The mornings seem OK, although I did get stuck in traffic due to an accident one morning.
The little roads and backstreets are where things get interesting, especially when you have a car that has been designed with BIG in mind. On only my second day of driving I damaged (slightly) my rear left alloy (all 20"). The reason... Narrow corner and a K-Truck part way onto my side of the road. No body damage so a sigh of releaf, but it has me wary of taking a wrong turn into some narrow alley.