Happy Sunday

Woke up at 9:00am today to an Amazon delivery – I bought a portable speaker to use in class for the rhythmic vocab drills! Ate my oranges and nectarines bought from yesterday for breakfast.

At 10:50am, a nearby ALT and her friend kindly offered to give me a ride to Gulliver, a car dealer that has some second hand cars available as well. I’ve decided to buy a car since I’ll be staying for more than a year. If you’re staying only a year, renting is definitely the way to go, but if you’re staying more than a year, it’ll be cheaper overall to buy one from the beginning. The staff were very nice, and bring you drinks as you discuss! They showed me a car they had prepared, which was within my budget at ¥198,000. I found out all the other costs involved (insurance, maintenance checks, car tax, etc.), and here was when the conversation turned a bit awkward. My Japanese wasn't quite good enough to be able to politely decline the sale, and I don't think I successfully managed to get across that I was just looking and checking prices, and not actually wanting to buy anything just yet. Then again I was never good at dealing with salespeople even in English either. Oh well…I’m sorry Mr. Salesperson!

After that we went for lunch at a pizza place called Bedford Market in Takasaki Station! Had a bit of a mini adventure finding a parking lot to park in, but we ended up in the parking lot for the cinemas, which wasn’t too bad. The pizza was really nice! It was thin crust and piping hot out of the oven. We also got their ricotta pancakes and they were so fluffy and nice! I finally understand what people mean by “fluffy” pancakes. At this point I had been messaging the car guy I was originally going to rent from, and found out that he does sell cars too! He very kindly offered to give me a ride from my apartment to his car garage (which was 45 minutes away in the next city Maebashi), which was super nice of him. I ended up deciding to buy a car from him for a bit more (so it’s slightly out of my budget) but he let me pay in installments with no interest, so I can afford it! I also chose to buy from him just cause I can call him if I need help with anything, plus he speaks English, so when I didn't know the specialized Japanese words for car jargon, we could still communicate smoothly. He just needs to take the car for its maintenance check (it was due in September), plus get all the documents for changing car ownership done (I need to do my part to and get some documents sent to him) and it should all be done, and the car under my ownership in 2 weeks time! Super excited for the convenience and freedom that will come with owning a car in Gunma.

After that he dropped me back home and I had dinner and got ready for school tomorrow.