Rhesus peices, or, Don't monkey with the process

I saw this political affiliation and liked it: Anti-Idiotarian. Sign me up.

Steps to properly disposing of my car:
1. Decide to junk car (Duh!)
2. Go to Auto Hobby Shop (AHS) and fill out form, which includes make & model, year, VIN, airbags Y/N, air conditioning Y/N and type of a/c coolant if applicable.
3. Wait up to 2 days for AHS employee to drive to junkyard with your form and return. He will bring back a paper with the amount you will need to pay for the "Recycling Fee".
4. Take paper to 7-11* and pay Recycling Fee. Get reciept.
5. Bring reciept to AHS, pay $60 and leave car (or arrange a date & place for it to be picked up). Remove DoD stickers and license plates.
6. Wait up to 3 days for them to deliver your car to junkyard and return. They will have a junking reciept**.
7. Take the junking reciept to the Vehicle Registration Office (VRO) on base. They will take back all of your used DoD stickerage but leave you the tags. They will fill out paperwork saying that you have junked your car.
8. Take this paperwork, and your tags and drive up past Yokohama to the Japanese government's Land Transportation Office (LTO). Present LTO with the paper from VRO and the tags. Pay them also...about $20-$23. At this point, you will also be refunded any unused road taxes for the vehicle, which is nice. I'll get back about $47 of the $73 I paid. Get your reciept saying that your car has been de-registered.
9. Take de-registering reciept back to VRO who will then take you out of their computer and sign your check out sheet.

I am currently at step #8. See. That's why I've been sweating this car junking deal. It's a real pain in the butt.

However, another nice perk is that you'll also get any unused insurance refunded to you. Everything in this country is applied to the vehicle itself, not the owner/driver. If you sold the car, the JCI (Japanese Compulsory Insurance) and road tax would transfer with the car to the new owner.

Status of Remote Control:
I never did get it figured out. I had the girl next door come over and we spent 15 or 20 minutes with it. All she could do was keep pushing buttons and exclaiming. "Hennnnhhhh?... choto, neh.", which translates as, "Hey, what the....? Hang on a minute."

I told Tag we needed to get Yumi (which, by the way is pronounced you-me, not yummy) down here with the instruction manual. You know the manual is gonna be in Kanji, too.

So Tag comes down abot 5 minutes later, bangs on the door and announces, "I'll fix that piece of crap TV!" Now, actually, it is a very nice 20-something inch flat screen Sony. But I understood what he meant. He meant fix it from continuing to bedevil us. Word.

He pulls a Philips DVD recorder out from under his arm and said, "We'll just hook this bad boy up."

And yep, just like an old VCR, after a minute and a half of installation work, we put that Sony on channel AUX and turned on the DVD machine. The DVD machine with the ENGLISH remote control and ENGLISH on-line prompts. Life is liveable again.

Nothing much else right now unless I go online and my imagination gets overstimulated again. We'll just see about that.


* You pay almost every fee, tax or bill at either 7-11 or the Post Office. I don't know why. You just do.

** You cannot, of course read any of these reciepts or certificates, so you just gotta trust everybody. Well, OK, you can read the cost of things as they use roman numerals. But we can't always tell what we are paying for.

Accomodationist, out
Travelin' Ed