This morning I took delivery of a very clean, very yellow Daihatsu Copen Cero and immediately went for a little drive to get a feel for the vehicle before picking up the puppy dog for our first non-enclosed road trip. This is the culmination of a remarkable amount of work and I could not be happier with the result. The car feels really good, is the right size, and will hopefully give the puppy the space she needs to move around while we're travelling across the country.
It's sometimes absurd to think that the initial reason for all this work has been to ensure the puppy wants to travel around the country.
After a quick trip to Autobacs1 to pick up a few cleaning supplies, I went back to the apartment to get the puppy and depart for our very first road trip. Ayumi was a bit nervous at first, but she seemed to warm up to being in the car after 20 minutes. One of the silly goals that I have over the next few years is to visit every lighthouse in Japan. Some are interesting. Some are sitting alone on rocks 100 metres from shore. Some are neglected and broken. But, with 300+ of them spread across the country, it seems like a logical goal for someone who would like to visit every corner of Japan by car. So for this inaugural trip, Ayumi and I went to 犬吠埼灯台2 on the eastern shores of Chiba Prefecture.
The plan was that we would arrive about an hour before sunset, walk around to explore and take pictures, then enjoy dusk with a light snack. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Google Maps was providing directions and made sure that we went down every little side street between the apartment and destination. It would have been comical if set to some Benny Hill music. Despite showing an initial ETA of 3:30pm when we left a little after noon, we arrived shortly after 5:30pm. The sun was gone and my attempts of night photography were abject failures.
Such is life, though. These sorts of challenges are to be expected when doing many new things all at once.
Hopefully the camera work will become easier with time and practice. As silly as it may seem, I hope to start a YouTube channel featuring trips around the country with the puppy dog. While there won't be many who find it interesting, the primary goal will be to show people that Japan is an excellent place to explore (with a puppy) by car.
Autobacs is an auto-focussed chain store in Japan.
Inubosaki Lighthouse.