The Week #154

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  • The rainy season has arrived in Kanto...which means it's been rainy the majority of the last week and will be rainy the following week(s) as well. I generally like the rainy season as, while it's humid, it's the last days of the year before the summer heat really kicks in.
  • Depending on the severity of the rain, Leo soccer match had the potential to be canceled. We'd find out if it was cancelled by 7am when we'd need to leave by 7:15 to arrive in time.

    It wasn't cancelled and Leo had his first soccer match at Nissan Stadium...in the rain! It was a friendly with a bunch of other Kanagawa pre-schools and football clubs. The uniforms were supposed to arrive by the friday prior, but they didn't, so we received them at the stadium and changed there. Each kid could pick their own number, so we have a couple of duplicates 🤣
    Go number 1!

    The game itself was as you'd expect a game of football with 5 year olds to be, they looked like a swarm of bees chasing after the ball. The important part though is they now know what it means to be on a team and know what it's like to play a game, so they'll be ready for a real game this fall. In the mean time, they train.
  • While we were at the soccer match, my wife was at the Japanese archery grounds, taking the test for her sho-dan. She's been working towards this for 2 years and passing this would allow her to practice by herself, whenever the archery grounds are open. Until now she's always had to practice as part of a group when a teacher is around under their supervision.

    They don't tell you the results directly after the test. First, I reckon they deliberate a bit, but then they tell your teacher and your teacher tells you. Come Monday morning, Yumi comes downstairs crying and my first thought was "oh no, who died..." but they were happy tears! Yumi passed her test and, once she pays her dues, will be able to practice whenever she wants.
  • We started looking at perhaps selling our Honda Freed and getting something smaller / easier to drive on the narrow roads around (most of the roads in our neighborhood are only wide enough for 1 car). Also something that's easier to park/back into the small parking spots. As it is now, I'm the only one that drives our car. I don't like driving it much because...narrow roads aren't fun, but also it burns gas, which literally goes against everything I'm working for at work. It's actively making things worse.

    The main (only) contender is the Sakura, the EV Kei car from Nissan. Kei cars are small 4-seaters perfect for driving in the city. At the upper grade, it also ProPilot, so it will be able to automatically park (head first, back in, and parallel), which will solve the main blocker for my wife driving our current car.

    I went to the dealer to get a quote and with all the bells and whistles it's about 360-man ($25k usd). We can sell our car for between 190 - 200-man (not to the dealer) and there's an EV subsidy for 55-man, so that would bring our cost down to 105-man.
    Nissan Sakura

    While at the dealer, I got to inspect it and do a demo of the automatic-parking and it's pretty great. It's so quiet inside the EV. Since it's electric, too, it will cost us nothing / near-nothing for fuel because of our solar panels...

    I'm sold on moving forward, but now I've got to convince my wife that we should move forward with it...after all, it was her idea!.
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