Demon Dave

Now now Troy, last I heard Justin was married :)

DaiOni, thanks for the link - I'll have to get a copy of the book for use during some of my advanced level adult classes - could make an interesting book review, especially since one of them is an official at our local government office

anyways, if my area is anything to go by rural can become semi-rural and then soon after that you'll find yourself living in the middle of a city before you knew what hit ya! The pace of development here is that fast. Until Aug 31st I was living in a small town, now the local gov decided it would be better to merge several small towns into one big city, build a ton of new (and un-needed) roads connecting them up and there we have it...I'm now an offical resident of the new Kai city Even in the four years I've been living at my current address the area has changed to the point it's almost unrecognizeable...everyday rice fields are being converted to shops, houses and roads....roads with tons of needless traffic signals WHY?! end of rant... seriously though, semi rural is ideal IMHO

nice read I noticed in his photo albums he's got quite a nice R33 GTSt

In my experience having some kind of teaching certificate, is a bonus but certainly not a pre-requisit. It took me less than 7 days after arriving here to find a job, using only newspaper and magazine ads - I didn't have any teaching experience, no teaching qualifications and no idea what I was getting myself into... a lot of getting a job comes down to timing - I (by chance) happened to arrive in Japan during the last week of March, just before the new school term began. Many schools have usually hired their new teachers by that time, certainly most of the big national schools have, but many, many other local schools may have last minute vacancies and if you're a foreigner looking for work, have a uni degree, are in Japan and able to got to an interview and most importantly can start work on short notice, they really don't care about certification....

Aye - got back from my trip home to Ol Blightly a couple of days ago...glad to be back in Japan - England seems to be going down hill in a big way. They've got nutts over there with speed camera's...not sure whether it was just my home town or what, but they were everywhere and so were cops, cop cars and I even drove past three "tax disc" check points in the space of 2 days... Couldn't see the pics on the other forum - said I needed to login.

Dino, when did you get your new wheels...and more importantly, where are the pics!?

we're hoping to organize something just as soon as I get back from England...hopefully before the end of September...

Dunno about the big group thing - last year it everyone seemed to disappear moments after we arrived, never to be seen again!

luv the way your Evo managed to "shuffle" sideways between pic 1 and 2 Is this some kind of "spot the difference" ?

How's about a tow rope between the Evo and the GT-V...would that be cheating? :D Nah...I'll be OK. There's no straight roads around here, all mountains passes and twisties, so while you guys have the quicker cars, I've got the home-field advantage :D

So, on paper, that's at least 20PS up on me...I might pull away for the first 50m's or so, the extra 500 cc's helping me out, but once your turbo spools up you'll be sailing past me of course, if I run without the tailpipe baffle in, my top end power is up...but the bottom end torque all but disappears...still, I could win by deafening everyone!

hehehe, the only way I'll have a "turbo" under the bonnet of my GT-V (anytime soon) is if I borrow the wife's hairdryer and duct tape it in the engine bay :D I dunno - stock 200PS RB25DE GT-V Vs slightly modded RB20DET GTSt???? ...the GT-V is slightly heavier than a 25GT (due to the extra GTT parts)...I've wanted TE-37's for a long time, but a set of Work Emotions came my way and I couldn't say no. Isn't the R32 GTSt lighter than the R34's anyway? Nah, a few mods to a the RB20DET and Justin will leave me for dust Still, be an interesting race though

In the past I've always gone to a dealer to have the shaken carried out, so I'm guessing there not going to be taking the car out for a thrashing... Was thinking to take the skyline myself next year, but if it means multiple trips and loads of hassle, stuff it, I'll take it to Nissan and get them to sort it all out...besides, I usually use shaken time to get loads of maintenance work (fluids, belts etc) done, so I might as well let 'em sort out the shaken too...

heheh - glad I'm not competing...I'm in third place, no doubts! :) Still pretty much standard under the bonnet of my GT-V. What is the standard power output on the GTSt M specs anyways?

Yeah, I must admit since coming here I've tried to follow a similar pattern - in most cases getting a new (used) car with shaken, running it for 2 years then changing it for something else. But, I dunno - my GT-V is up for renewal next Feb and I think I'll bite the bullet and get shaken for another 2 years instead of selling...nevertheless, I've been thinking how to trim some of (unnecessary) costs down...

Troy / Justin, you have PM

if you give me the post code, or name of the area of where you're living now I can run it through me Nav system and get an accurate time/distance report from here to there/there to here... I think the six hour estimate assumed you were driving with Miss Daisy RB powered rocket ships (and Evo's ) should be able to do it much quicker than that

but that was from my place to Kyoto - no Osaka. Depends on the traffic really - going there took a lot longer (as I recall) 'cause we got caught up in traffic around Nagoya... As I said before, I highly recommend you stop off at the Nissan Prince museum in Nagano - it's on the way to Yamanashi and well worth the visit...it'll break up the long hours on the expressway too....

Justin, a couple of years back I drove to Kyoto...IIRC the drive was somewhere between 3 and 4 hours, but that was 5 people, plus luggage, packed into a Nissan cube with 89 PS of raw power and a max cruising speed of around 80mk/h, less when going uphill I imagine, in light traffic and with a heavy right foot, you guys could easily do it in around 2 hours or so....

Now that's all cleared up does anyone know how to go about doing a "self Shaken"? I heard several people say they took the car to the test centre themselves, thereby saving the cost of having a dealership/garage do it for you, but I wonder what's involved? Even so, what with the taxes and everything, surely it's still gonna cost the better part of 100,000 yen for a #3 car, right?

Justin/Troy, I'm back in England for the first couple of weeks in Sept, so it'll have to be after that. Yamanashi is a fair way from Tokyo - it's around 120KM from my place to Shinjuku...still it's a long journey for you guys coming from Osaka. I you can arrange to do some sight seeing - the Fuji five lakes, Fuji, the Skyline museum in Nagano and maybe the hankone skyline too, then it'd make the trip more worthwhile...

Justin, congrats are getting the car sorted Good choice with the rims - the black wheels suit the car, it looks proper mean Looking forward to going on some runs in the not too distant future

So far my cars are (on average) around the 100,000 yen mark. Most expensive shaken was on my old R33, but at the time I took it to a Nissan dealer and had them give it a full service - oil, filters, plugs, belts the works...came to around 160,000 yen IIRC. I guess getting shaken can get very expensive if you have to start messing around replacing worn tires, swapping exhausts and "de tuning" a performance vehicle...

what's involved in getting a shaken - simple, giving the government lots of money in taxes Seriously, most of the cost of shaken is made up from taxes - tax for this, tax for that, compulsory insurances, weight tax etc etc. There are 2 options (AFAIK) for getting a shaken. Most people drop their car off at a local dealer/garage and get them to sort everything out. A few, prefer to do it themselves and (although I've not done this myself) I believe it involves a trip to the prefectural shaken/test centre, filling out a pile of paper work, then driving the car through a series of booths, each one checking things like emission, lights, brakes etc. Then empty your wallet of a load of money, get your little shaken sticker/documents and away you go...