22 June, 2007

・・rant of the day・・




'chasing cars' - snow patrol

so, i work in a pretty cool area.
and in a cool area there are cool people.
and cool people drive cool cars.

my range of 'cool' is pretty wide - and there are many cool cars.
i like beetles. i like minis (both old & new) i like seriously old retro cool cars (think 1960s nissans or big american cars)

but some cars are just NOT cool.
now, i understand if you're driving a car for practical reasons; ie it's all you can afford or you 6 children so you need a people carrier.

but some cars are *so* not cool.
for me, uncool means driving a 4WD in tokyo. these cars are designed for mountains & gravel & roughness. tokyo? not any of that.
wandering around the hood here, i often see hummers. WHY?! what the hell do you need a hummer for? the only reason is to look cool. well, they're not cool. they're gas guzzling giants. bad for the environment. bad for driving here (i mean, have you seen the size of the roads round here?) and just impractical giants.

but they're not the cars that annoy me most.

the ones that really annoy me are the really expensive cars (think porsche, ferrari or lamborghini)
again, these cars are totally impractical for tokyo. these cars are for speeding down the motorway to your summer cottage by the sea. or zooming to an important party you have in monte carlo, or some such nonsense...
they are NOT designed to sit at traffic lights.

but, yeah, i must admit that a little part of me finds these cars sexy.

but that's not really bothers me.
it's the nasty horrible evil colours you see them in.
i really don't understand why someone would shell out millions of yen (a quick look on the web puts a yellow 2003 porsche 911 at
7,770,000円, about 1,000,000 more than a sensible white one.
AND THAT'S SECOND HAND!
somebody somewhere must have bought it new - but that's besides the point.

why on earth would you spend that much money on something that just looks trashy.

i have developed a number of theories on why people would choose to buy a really expensive car in F**K Off colours:

1. money does not equal to good taste (aka more money than sense...)
2. when they were thinking of colours, they thought, 'bugger it - if i am spending this much money on a car, i want to be noticed'
3. it was the only colour available (very much doubt this one)
4. the colour is the same as there company logo, or whatever
5. they're big believers in feng shui

now this is the bit where i completely contradict myself...

if the car were a VW beetle, then weird colours are OK.
in fact, i would encourage them. beetles are supposed to be in bright neo-like colours...

and here endeth today's rant...


5 comments:

Kenzamurai said...

Whenever I fly back to Narita, I always wish i knew someone who has a car to come collect me from the airport but always none...(I don't mind these sports cars, i'll be happy to be driven home by them) then sadly take Keisei line back to Shinjuku and change to annoying Chuo line..dragging heavy suitcases- and last night was one of those nights- yea I'm back for a little while in Japan from your country!, completely jetlagged at the moment up all night as my body is still operating with thr British time...aww.. Keep up your good work Helen!

Anonymous said...

Heheheh

Even some car makers agree with you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv157ZIInUk

Sandi said...

Did you have to look up how to spell Lamborghini, or did you just know?

Astin-Martin, baby, in British Racing-Green. Do that call it that in Britain, or is it like French Fries?

MissSin said...

ken - welcome back. know what you mean about the trek back from narita...not what you need after a 12 hour plane journey!

j-ster - am chuckling away here. loved the videos...especially the car catapult!

sandi - lamborghini is in the spellcheck ;) (so is porsche, come to that...)
and, yeah, british racing green is a proper colour in the uk. was the colour of the british GP team way back in time, hence the name. very classy colour indeed...and car too.
in fact, i might even go as far to say that it may even be shagadelic.

arumanda said...

i'm always befaffled by these silly cars in the middle of tokyo. utterly ridiculous. i laugh the most at the bald middle aged men in their sportscars. i can smell the midlife crisis 5km away.

one of our students - a very spoiled, rich daddy's boy, just lost his licence for racing his corvette 230km down the road. i'm glad he didn't kill anyone.