Pimp My Ride!!

So in the states I was driving this:

A 2008 Mercury Mariner--fully loaded, black leather interior...it was beautiful and I almost cried when we took it down to Jersey to put it in storage.

Now, that I live in Japan, I most definitely have upgraded (not) and am driving this:

A 1995 Mazda MPV--I know, I know, I always swore I would never drive a van, but now I am a van driver and have to admit it is not that bad. So our car, you can kind of tell from the picture, is a piece of junk, but we love it and the best part we only paid $700, that is right--what a steal!! For being so junky, the car runs pretty well and doesn't have too many kilometers on it. The best part is, we don't care what happens to it as recently happened to me. The kids and I were going to visit a friend off base. The road to their house is SOOOOOO tiny. On one side is a fence covered in tons of overgrowth and on the other side is metal fence. Well, I missed the turn to her house and came back and was turning onto her street and remember ALL the streets in Japan are very narrow, anyways, I cut my turn too close and my car scraped up against the metal fence. Well, I tried to back up and fix it and again my car scraped, so finally I was like, who cares and just turned in scraping up the WHOLE side of my car. I was kind of embarrassed, because there was a japanese lady sitting there watching this whole episode and I know she was thinking, "stupid, gaijin (that means foreigner)". Well, I was telling my friend what I did and she showed me their car and it had scratches all over it. Anyways, that night, I fixed a nice dinner and over dinner I told Eric I had something to confess and told him about the car. I didn't think he would be upset or anything, but his response surprised me a little. He just laughed and said, "Who cares--that is why we have a $700 car!" What a great husband--anyways it is know a nice little laugh we have with others. Also, it is kind of funny because so many of my friends have similar stories about scraping their cars--it is pretty funny. So, moral of the story--it is nice to drive a beater!

On a side note, I have become very accustomed to driving on the other side of the road. I have a feeling when we finally move back to the states, driving will be a BIG adjustment--so watch out!