Regarding cars

We all know – and, judging from the numbers of ones seen on the street, somewhat appreciate – Japanese cars. They are thought of as reliable and quite good, not necessarily one’s to scream about, like the supercars in Top Gear, but for the average Joe Japanese cars seem to be just right. When not considering subjective opinions or personal tastes, that is.

However, I think that not many people realise that Japanese cars in Europe are usually different to those on the streets of Japan itself. I’m not going to go into technical details, I simply don’t know them and they’re not what one sees first. What one sees first is, well, how they look.

Allow me to use a dog metaphor here. If we assume that, let’s say, Honda Accord is a labrador retriever – long body, long snout, gentle curve at the back – then an average Japanese car, such as Honda Life, is a pug: it looks as if someone squeezed it from both ends so that it takes up less space.

I rode in cars like that a few times (my host family two years ago had a similar one), so I can assure you that they are like the TARDIS: bigger on the inside. One is sat quite high, but there’s plenty of leg room, though it may be uncomfortable for tall people.

What’s more, this trend doesn’t stop at your everyday Joe’s cars – among others, I’ve seen pick-up trucks looking like this.

At first these cars cause some mixed feelings, partly surprise, partly amusement (mainly because of the striking likeness to a pug). But when you think about it, they’re not that surprising after all, though, of course, they can still be funny, nobody is going to forbid anyone to giggle or smile at the sight of such a car. In Japan there aren’t that many places that wouldn’t be built on already and finding a parking space in the cities is a problem (naturally, the bigger the city, the bigger the problem). Often, when we manage to get somewhere high up and get a night-time view of Japan from above, we’ll notice that that the only places that are not lit up are mountains too high to build on and in some places – the sea. I’m sure this changes a little bit in the countryside, but even this isn’t that “empty” either. And when there’s little space, a compact-size car like these is making perfect sense because it’s not wasting said space: it parks as close to the wall/barrier/whatever as possible, leaving enough room for others.

Of course, let’s not demonise nor get too far with the generalisations: “normal looking” cars exist in Japan as well and are nothing unusual. I can’t tell what type of people are more likely to buy which one, but now that I think really hard of it, I seem to remember that in the Osaka-Kobe region, where I lived two years ago, I’ve seen far less of the “normal looking” cars than in Kanazawa – and if that’s true, it’s likely to confirm my theory of saving/making good use of free space, which there is more of in Kanazawa and around than in Osaka-Kobe and around (third and fifth biggest cities in Japan in terms of the population; to compare: Kanazawa is thirty fourth).

How many pugmobiles can we find on this university parking?