Trying to buy a car... (part 1)

...isn't easy on Planet Japan.

Well, another weekend taking the train to nowhere. Mei, Nicole and I are in agreement... we need a car. While Tokyo is easy enough to get around using public transport, it's not very convenient, especially if you live 15 minutes walk from the station. It's hard to buy groceries in bulk, or any large items and you really are restricted to going places where there's a train stop. Enough is enough, time to get a car.

Through a colleague's recommendation I went to see the guys at Autodirect. I'm used to buying cars the old fashioned way, head down to the dealership, check out the car I like, test drive, put a down payment, get financing, etc.

Ahh, but this is Planet Japan, things are done differently. Before even going down to the dealership I was advised to head on over to the Singapore embassy to get a 'signature certificate'. I believe this document is to prove that your signature is real? Anyhoo... got the certificate. Went down to the dealership, which doesn't actually have any cars... ok, I lied, it had 2 second hand Porsches. That's it. No car lot, nothing to see. On Planet Japan you tell the dealer what car you want and he then looks for it... okie.

But before he looks for it, he needs to get financing approval. This involves a world war two interrogation (without the physical toture), irrelevant questions like 'how many kids do you have?' and 'how old?'. I presume they need to know incase my 5 year old wants to take the car out for a late night supper run...

Sigh, you can see where this is going... nowhere fast.

Interrogation done, financing approved, power of attorney signed, now one needs to prove that they have a parking lot to park your car. This step involves the police (men in black), thankfully the dealer said he will deal with it... I don't want to know, nor care how he does it.

And this is as far as I have gotten... the easy part. The pain awaits and I can only ask for your prayers.