Monday, January 12, 2009

Low miles, slow miles, no miles

I've blogged before about how little we drive in Japan. It's not unusual for a tank of gas to last me nearly two weeks and O can go almost an entire month on one tank. The girls literally go weeks without ever getting in the car. There's just no need to drive much. Everything we need is within a 2 mi radius of our house, if I'm going further than that, I take the bus or the train.

Back in November, my piece of junk van finally bit the Big One and my wonderful hubby bought me a shiny, new one. Well, new to me at least! LOL It's a 1997 Honda StepWagon and it's a beaut! I love it (Lord help me, I can't believe I just said that about a mini van!) It runs great, is really roomy, has crazy low milage and even has an in-dash CD/TV/DVD/GPS, all for the low, low bargain price of $2800!!!! Can you believe that price???? And that's actually the high end of car prices here on and around the base. You can regularly find a decent car in the range of $1000 - $1500.

And those crazy low miles? Today my van clicked over 76,000km. That's just over 47,000 miles!!! On a 12 year old car! Back in the States a 12 y.o. vehicle would have upwards of 180,000 miles on it. That's 4 times as many miles! When I think about how far I was commuting 5 days a week in the States, usually about 70 miles A DAY, I get nauseous. So much time wasted stuck in the car! I can tell you, I'm spoiled forever now.
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1 comment:

Gina said...

Congratulations on getting a new car! : )