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I work in Japan and strange things happen to me.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

A Thousand Dollars!!

The first car I bought in Japan was a Honda Accord LX. It was nine years old and had about 50,000 kilometers on the odometer. It cost one hundred thousand yen (about $1,000). This was most expensive car I had ever owned. To put this in perspective one has to understand that the two cars I had owned previous were a 1976 Pontiac Astre and a 1978 Chevy truck.

The Astre was one of Detroit’s first responses to the oil crunch in the 70s and the best thing I can say is that it always started. It might stall or stop immediately, but it always started. It had over 200,000 miles on it, leaked oil and most of the body had been replaced by sheet metal held on by pop rivets when I finally sold it for $60 to a guy who had just got out of prison and needed the car to drive to his job at Burger King. He could not pay the $60 dollars all at once, but stopped three Fridays in a row with $20.

The truck had a straight eight-cylinder engine. The body was mostly rusted out, but once it got its speed up the truck could fly. It literally looked like it was flying going down the highway with its rusted quarter panels flapping in the wind like the wings of a bat out of hell, filling the rear view mirrors of cars before it sped past them at over 100 miles per hour.

When I checked the blue book value of the Honda online, I could not find one that had so few miles, but 5 – 10 thousand dollars seemed to be the average price for a Honda Accord LX in the US. Used cars are cheap in Japan. The reason I learned was because of something called SHA-KEN.

The word is formed by two Kanji characters: 車 car and 検 inspection. Quite simple really, it means a car inspection. Three years after they are purchased new, all cars must be inspected every two years to insure that they meet certain safety requirements. Drivers take their cars to service stations and mechanics check the brake pads, tire tread, windshield wipers, etc.
The kicker is the price. If nothing is wrong with the car, the inspection for a 1500 cc engine is about one thousand dollars. Parts and labor to replace worn parts push the price up.

About three months after I bought the car, it was due for its SHA-KEN checkup. We drove the car down to the local service station waited while the mechanics checked the car out. For the education of the customers, the lobby of the garage was decorated with used car parts demonstrating how much tread was necessary on a tire and how much a break pad was needed to pass the inspection. I wandered around and checked these displays out.

After the inspection was complete, the mechanic invited us back to have a look at the car. The car was on a lift in the garage with its tires off so that we could see the pads and the struts. The idea had struck me that this was a government issued license to steal. The garage could fail a car just to sell unnecessary parts. Primed with the knowledge gleaned from the lobby displays, I was ready to resist any selling pressure.

First the mechanic showed me one of the tires. “This is your tire. When the tread gets too worn, it is very dangerous. You could have puncture.” I looked down at the tread. I slid a ten yen coin into the tire tread. In the US we had been told to use a penny and the tread should reach Abe’s head. The ten yen coin slid in what looked to me an approximately as far as Lincoln’s brow line.

“There is plenty of tread on this tire,” I said a little aggressively.
“Yes,” the mechanic agreed. “This tire is fine.”

Next, we looked at the brake pads. “This is the brake pad,” the mechanic explained. “If the pad is too worn, it is very dangerous. The car might not stop and you could have an accident.”
I had just studied the brake pads in the lobby. “This brake pad is fine. There is plenty of pad left.” Again I was aggressive.

The mechanic agreed immediately, “Yes, this brake pad is fine.”

The conversation was not going the way I had imagined. The mechanic would point out the dangers of worn parts. I would point out that there was no problem and he would immediately cave and agree with me. It was not exactly the hard sell that I had been anticipating.

I began to get nervous. Maybe I was missing something. My knowledge of car maintenance is pretty spotty and except for what I had gleaned from the crash course in the lobby, I had no knowledge of what was safe or not.

There was another lift with a car being inspected in the garage. The car looked pretty new, probably its first time and the mechanic was showing the owner a young woman around the car. I eavesdropped on their conversation. “This is the brake pad,” the woman’s mechanic explained saying exactly the same thing I had heard moments before. “If the pad is too worn, it is very dangerous. The car might not stop and you could have an accident.”

“Is this pad OK?” the woman asked.
“It would be better if it were new,” the mechanic replied.
“Should I change it?” she it asked.
“It would be safer if it were new,” the mechanic repeated.
“Please change it,” the woman said.
“I understand,” said the mechanic.

Everything was clear to me now. The customer had to ask for the unnecessary parts. Brilliant.

In the end, the expiration date on my highway flare had expired and I needed new windshield wipers. I paid one hundred and ten thousand yen and was bowed out of the service center’s parking lot.

That was my first experience with SHA-KEN over ten years ago now. I consider it a testament to how far I have come in Japan that when the mechanic says, “There is nothing wrong with your car. Please pay one hundred thousand yen to the cashier” it does not even strike me as odd anymore.

I wonder what I would have had to pay to bring the Astre or that old Chevy truck up to code.

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