Demon Dave

Welcome to the club! Plenty of great stuff to do in the Chiba area...bet it won't take you long to get to TAS '05!

With the exception of a stuck-up a$$hole at my local bank (who refused to change my friends travellers cheques because he didn't have an account with the bank!!!, then refused to change them for me when I told him I had an account there, acted as if I was lying, then insisted I prove my ID and account information and finally set an a dumbass limit of 10,000 yen!) I've never had any problems with racism / anti-gaijinism On the whole I'm pretty comfortable with the way I'm percieved and the way I'm treated by the people I meet. In any society there's bound to be the odd few people who take an instant disliking to foreigners, no matter who they are or where they come from. Thankfully these people are the exception rather than the norm...

Count me in for TAS '05...and maybe the Nismo Fest, depending on where they hold it...and any other events that aren't too far from Yamanashi and worth the trip...

Thanks for the kind words guys Yeah, would be great to meet up again. And with May being that special month , how's about some time during Golden Week? Justin what's this about you heading out to Perth - you're not leaving Japan are you???

I couldn't agree more. :P I'm always getting myself into trouble with the better half because I want to spend too much money on cars. Justin - my second son was born this morning, 8:03 AM. All happy and healthy and in answer to the threads question - I'm a Knowledge Distribution Officer... i.e. Teacher

Hehehe - thanks for the welcome back. Unfortunately work and family comittments have meant I haven't been able to frequent the boards as often as I would like... :D BTW - still waiting for the arrival of son No.2...should have been born last week (I'm thinking he's already taking after mom, i.e: never on time ) should be anytime now... Back on topic - Honda's aren't really very big in my neck of the words, but then again the mountain roads around here are ideal drift country and thus most of the modded cars I see are RWD and drift orientated...

At the RWYB track I frequent most weekends, Honda's are by far the least popular type of car I've seen there, mainly because of the FWD layout. Sure, they're great cars in general (I really liked my old civic) but as PURE said that are a lot more "suitable" road and drift cars out there for the same money... Having said that, at an event at Tsukuba in January the car that got most attention wasn't a silvia, an Arta NSX or even a Nismo R33 GTR... twas the Spoon Civic...geez when they started that thing up the ground rumbled (note the number of "enthusiasts" in the pic with their hands over their ears...whimps! )

I'm not sure it's 13...there's regularly stuff in the local papers about guys getting busted for under-age sex... LOL @ the T-Shirt...

I think things vary a lot in Japan and they're especially dependant on where you live. Yes, there are loads more speed cameras in the bigger cities, but in my neck of the woods they are few and far between. As for the police, I've never been pulled over so no first hand experience. They do appear more lenient than the UK. One of the advantages of being a (new to Japan) foreigner is you can pretend you don't speak any Japanese and plead ignorance of the law which might get you off many minor offences... ...trouble is though, the more years you've been here the less likely that sort of thing will work Funny thing about speeding in big cities - everytime I'm in Tokyo it seems theres so many lights, so much traffic and so many junctions that I'm lucky to get into 2nd gear before I have to stop again!

me neither...

On the subject of wangan racing - its pretty common to see high powered cars rocketing around the Shutoko C1 late at night, but AFAIK very few people have ever been chased by the police for doing so. Makes you wonder why the hell the police have those GTR cop cars for if they're not even gonna use them... Now - there's an idea for Fast and Furious 3 - wangan racing with the cops chasing the bad guys in a nicely sorted R34 cop car... (not that I'm a fan of Fast and Furious mind )

To me it seems the Japanese government could save a fortune on speed limit signs since as far as I'm concerned no one obeys the speed limit (with a few exceptions like 90 year farmers in kei trucks ) Even though most roads around here are a 40km/h limit, most people drive around the 60 km/h mark whenever traffic permits. We do have a couple of fixed speed cameras that I'm aware of both of which are on the main bypass through town, but the rest are just for keeping tabs of traffic and license plates (AFAIK). The police are few and far between in Japan, especially in the evenings and they do seem to turn a blind eye to most of the lesser motoring "offences"...

All I can say is: "Ohh no - not another one!" But, for anyone interested in the "story" some info is here: E Online

hehehe - in my experience Japanese University students are no different to uni students in any other country... Bloody Lazy buggers the lot of them! :D DaiOni - you could be right about the income level for self employed visa requiremtents - every time I got to either my local immigration office (ohh, what cheerful souls they have working there - NOT ) or my local tax office I end up coming out more confused (and with more paperwork) than when I went in! But, generally speaking, after expenses you need to clear around 200,000 to 250,000 a month...

I don't see why not! I have no plans to ever leave Japan, certainly not to go back to Old Blighty anyways, so I often think about what I'm going to be doing, say 10 or 20 years from now... Will I still be teaching English? I dunno - but aside from that there isn't a lot you can do in Japan unless you are a qualified proffessional and can speak fluent Japanese. Even then, I've met a fair few people over here who work for Japanese companies and it aint all good - especially if you're expected to work to the same levels as everyone else. I can think of one person who regularly posts on here, who's job I definitely would not wanna do. I have several friends who "graduated" from being an English teacher to working for a Japanese company - only to discover it's not all good. While the twice yearly bonuses may be nice, shitty working hours, virtually no vacations and being bottom of the pile in terms of worker seniority makes me appreciate what a leisurely job I have now... Having said that, in my personal experience maybe 80% of the English teachers I know of are under 40...

And I should also add, that if you wanted to go on a self employed route (which many of the people I know do) you still need to satsify a load of criteria, the main one being that your income from work should be enough to support you financially - that works out to be around 3 million yen a year. So, you have to provide evidence that the work you are doing is bringing in a sufficient amount of money every month. Any less and you will probably be deemed as not self supporting and won't qualify for the working visa....

I should add that the above does not hold if you wish to start a LIMITED company in Japan. In that case, you WILL need 3 Million yen in the bank account (either when you create the company, or after 5 years). If you don't meet the criteria, the government cannot shut you down (immediately) but they can (and often do) audit your company. Basically they just like to know what you (your company) is up to, make sure your paying taxes and so forth... For our purposes - we work on a self Employed basis - the legal jargon is complicated, and I don't profess to understand it all (don't think the Japanese understand it either) but my friend who founded the company around 8 years ago set it up on a self employed basis. As it has grown, myself and several other staff have joined as employees of the self employed owner - if that makes sense.

Not sure you've got that one right. I have been (along with 2 other foreigners) running my own school for well over 5 years now. We do not have any any lawyers. We do not use any accountants. We do all our own taxes and stuff (which we're in the middle of right now - ohh, how much fun it is...NOT! Nor do we have tons of cash in bank accounts. Setting up your own company here, and working for it on a self employed basis, is actually really easy. (with the exception of taxes!). Nor have we ever heard of any gaijin's company (or any company for that matter!) being dissolved because it wasn't profitable! Having said that, starting your own company in Japan is a big undertaking, and you absolutely need someone who can read/write Japanese (that's where wives are handy ). and it helps if you've got someone who can go through the tons of documents needed to be filled in, especially during tax season. And of course, while you do not need a degree to start a company here, you do need a degree to qualify for the visa so that you can work for it! I also agree with what DaiOni said on what foreigners actually do here. In my area, most of the caucasian work in education, but go to a big city like Tokyo and you'll find many more people working in IT, business, sales etc etc...

Yeah - in order to get the working visa you need a degree (or equivalent) otherwise the immigration office won't issue you the working permit. There are ways around it - being the spouse of a Japanese national, having relatives over here, plus a few other possibilities like volunteer work and I believe a working holiday visa is also available. But, as DaiOni said, at the end of the day it's going to be really difficult getting a job here without some kind of degree....

Damn - that S15 looks good

Motivation and time... I'm motivated, but finding time between work, more work, family (wife and kids)and hobbies (got to fit in time for this place , other forums, masses of events, car mags, etc etc etc ) leaves little time left for study...

Great link! Some of those models are pretty impressive

Great find Nice little program for learning hiragana/katakana. It's a shame they don't have something similar for learning Kanji....ohh, how I hate kanji

Must be one hell of a big car park! I was thinking to head down there and catch some of the D1 drift action this year...

I stand corrected