Matigo dot See, eh?

Car audio systems that come pre-installed from the factory are rarely anything to write home about. The stereo often has a UI that is confusing, the speakers are often entry level, and the road noise washes out most of the fine nuance in the music once the vehicle moves faster than 40km/h. Because of this, I opted to not have any audio system installed in my car when it was delivered as my plan was to install very specific components to achieve the sound that I was after.

In October, less than a week after taking delivery of the yellow Copen, I got to work installing everything my initial research said was needed:

• a Joyn bluetooth stereo kit
• a Pioneer TS-C1630SII speaker kit, consisting of two woofers and two tweeters
• a Pioneer TS-WX140DA powered subwoofer
• and enough sound damping material to silence a toddler

The installation itself took a little over two hours and has worked pretty well since it was first powered on. However, when driving at highway speeds, music still tended to wash out. Podcasts were even harder to enjoy if one of the participants mumbled or had a thick accent. Suffice it to say, the initial work was an incomplete solution. Something else was needed to improve the audio quality.

Over the next few months I toyed around with different methods to improve the sound quality within the car. Additional padding was installed. Vibrations were chased down and eliminated. The trunk panels were bulked up with damping sheets. At one point some thick blankets were kept behind the seats to help muffle any sound that would come from that direction¹. Some of the work resulted in improvements. Some of it did not. What I really wanted to do was find a way to build an active noise-cancelling system for inside the car. Unfortunately, this proved to be cost prohibitive².

Last week I decided to approach the problem from a different angle.

The tweeters are located in the pillars that hold the windshield. The woofers are located in the door. The subwoofer is behind the passenger seat. This means that the main sound is coming from the front of the car while the lower-frequency elements are coming from behind. In some of the nicer cars I've been fortunate enough to ride in, the key to "luxury" is having a surround sound system badged with a Dolby logo, a Bose logo, or both. Given there is nothing inherently wrong with the Pioneer speakers, and the Joyn stereo is really the perfect accessory for the car, it made sense to look into transforming the five-speaker system into a seven-speaker solution.

One of the many challenges of installing parts in a two-seater convertible car is space; there is simply not very much of it for third-party additions. I've seen some people on X add speakers behind the seats in order to improve sound, but this would not really solve the problem that I had with sound clarity. I've even seen a creative person replace the rear window platform with a custom-speaker base. Both of these solutions made use of standard car woofers and could be done without spending too much money. However, I wanted something that would offer improved clarity while also being useful when the top is down. What I needed was a pair of unobstructed satellite speakers.

With a plan in mind, I started looking into which models might work for my car. Again, because the Copen is a rather compact convertible, mounting options are incredibly limited. Had I bought a car with a fixed roof, there would be dozens of potential solutions. I needed something compact that would also match the stylings of the car. Fortunately, Pioneer has the perfect solution: the TS-STX510-B satellite speaker kit.

A quick search online showed that Amazon had these on sale for 29% off list price. A few clicks later and a pair was scheduled for next day delivery.

The original plan was to find a way to mount these speakers to the seatbelt guide. This idea was scrapped when the sleek items arrived, though, as they were simply too heavy and awkward to place there. I would need something a little more sturdy … like the space between the roll bars.

In most convertibles there is a wind deflector between the roll bars. This is said to accomplish two goals:

1. Air from inside the car – such as the A/C – would hit the deflector and stay in the vehicle
2. Air from outside the car would not be able to enter over the trunk as a result of wind channel patterns

I do not know if either of these are actually accomplished by the 5cm tall piece of clear plastic that sits between the driver and passenger roll bars, but it almost doesn't matter. The speakers have to go somewhere, and between the seats strikes me as the most logical.

So that's where they went.

And they're perfect.

This evening I went for a little trip around Aichi prefecture to test the new sound setup and came away incredibly impressed. Not only can I hear many more details in the music that I listen to, but the road noise has also diminished quite a bit. This is most likely due to the proximity of a bare speaker to my ears, but it's a nice little bonus. Sirens from ambulances and police can still be heard, as can the horns from impatient or frustrated drivers, but the endless droning of tires on pavement has been masked reasonably well. Hopefully they're just as effective when listening to spoken-word podcasts.

Later this year, after the temperature warms up a bit, I hope to install a bit more sound damping in the car to reduce a bit more noise³, but I really feel that the audio setup is just about perfect as it is.

1. These would also come in handy in the event the puppy dog and I needed to keep warm for some reason … like waiting to watch the first sunrise of the year from the windy shores of Shizuoka Prefecture.

2. I was not willing to spend over $800 on more electronics that would muffle exterior sounds with the help of microphones that required holes to be drilled through the body of the car in various places. I know "it's just a car", but I'm not yet ready to start poking permanent holes into the body.

3. I am surprised by how much styrofoam is in the car. Sure, it's light and doesn't mind getting wet, but it's a horrible material for sound absorption or dissipation.

Over the past few months I have found it a little uncanny how often people will look over at my car and smile. This might happen if Ayumi and I are out and about, as she tends to get attention everywhere she goes. It might happen if it's just me in the car with the top down despite the season. However, the pattern is always the same: people see the bright yellow car, they look inside, and they smile.

Given the overall reaction that people have, I'm beginning to wonder why more people do not have fun cars and happy puppies.

Last month it seemed like Ayumi and I were approached by at least one person everywhere we went who wanted a photo of the puppy hanging out the window. It happened at Bentenjima, Lake Yamanaka, Oarai Sun Beach, Nokogiriyama, and Hakone¹. During the workweek, we would sometimes head to Teganuma Park at lunchtime. People would see Ayumi poking her head out of the car and remark at how cute she is or wave to catch her attention. Phones would be pointed. Pictures would be taken and, presumably, shared. It's wonderful to see.

One of the reasons I chose my car was because it looks happy, and it's hard for me to not smile when walking up to the vehicle from the front. It's headlights and big grille make it look a bit like a cartoon character; forever in a good mood and ready for silly adventures. While most people invest their money into practical cars that can get them from Point A to B in a safe and reliable manner, it's a shame that so many vehicles on the road are dull and utilitarian. Not everyone can get by with a two-passenger convertible, but car companies could do a little more to make their vehicles a bit more interesting for the average person. Offering vibrant colours would be an easy place to start.

Maybe if more people could smile – and were smiled at – while in their car, we'd see less road rage and fewer frowns throughout the day.

1. Ayumi and I had a very busy month, it seems.

Late last year, right before Christmas, Daihatsu Japan released a news statement reporting that some of the safety certifications for 64 vehicle models and three engines were fraudulent. The issue has apparently gone unnoticed for years and, as a result, cars may not be as safe in a collision as the public was lead to believe. In response to this news, the management of Daihatsu has shut down production of any vehicles identified as having false certifications and processes will be put into place to ensure that such things cannot happen again going forward.

This response is pretty boilerplate for any Japanese company found guilty – or even legitimately accused – of wrongdoing.

Japanese social media was buzzing with speculation about what sorts of problems might exist with the tens of millions of Daihatsu vehicles that navigate the roads every day, but I noticed an interesting pattern with many of the people I follow, who all own Daihatsu's plucky little Copen: "We're concerned, but won't stop driving the car."

In my case, I'm not concerned at all and most certainly will not stop driving my car. Heck, I don't even want any sort of refund or special service as a result of this situation. I knew that buying a car as small as a Daihatsu that it was not going to protect me from serious collisions. I've seen the aftermath of an accident involving a Daihatsu at busy intersections over the years. To say it's "not good" would be an understatement. This doesn't mean the vehicle is unsafe or is unable to protect an occupant from most types of crash, but it does mean I should pay just a little more attention to where other vehicles are while I'm effectively "queued up for a T-bone"¹, which I should be doing anyway.

When people ask me why I'm so casual about this given the very real possibility of a new driver, young family, or elderly person being in a serious accident, I point to the overall track record of vehicle collisions since 2010:

Between 2010 and 2022, the number has almost halved. This is not because people are all clamouring to buy larger vehicles or because people drive more carefully today than they did before the advent of smart phones, but because vehicles – even those with falsified safety test results – are better able to protect its occupants today than ever before. Yes, every death is a tragedy, but not every death is preventable.

When some scoff at this, I follow up with a question:

Is there any company with more than a dozen people anywhere in this country that is 100% perfect in everything that it does? If so, they are lying to you.

We all know how situations like this come to pass. Senior management tells their people to accomplish a certain goal with very tight constraints. Middle management tells their people to make those goals a reality while having an egregious number of meetings with each other to make it look like they're busy. The people who report to middle management do what they can with the resources they have.

And then comes the actual problem: someone in the chain decides to muck things up a little bit. This can happen a number of ways. Perhaps someone is simply lazy and doesn't want to do their work. Perhaps someone is overworked and simply does not have the time to complete everything they're expected to do. Perhaps someone does not have the necessary training. Perhaps someone wishes to create havoc simply because they can.

Or maybe the issue is in management? A middle manager wants to get ahead of their peers by completing their work first. Or, more accurately, demanding their people to complete the work first. Or the manager wants to do something under budget, so does not talk to HR about bringing in one or two more people to help an already over-extended team. Or the manager is a walking example of the Peter Principle and is clueless about what's actually required and how to communicate it down the chain.

Fact of the matter is, anything that is created by humans is flawed in at least one area. The more complex something is, the greater the risk of flaws. I accept this risk and get out of bed each day not knowing whether my apartment will collapse in an earthquake, whether my car will be in the parking lot when I go outside, whether my shoe laces will remain tied, or whether my coffee will be hot by the time I take the first sip. However, based on historical patterns, I can assume that my apartment will withstand a common earthquake, my car will not be stolen, my shoes will remain on my feet, and my coffee will be hot for at least one sip.

I appreciate that Daihatsu is going to do better going forward, as any organisation that takes pride in its work should. However, I am not going to be angry or upset that such a thing was possible or that it affected the very car that I received just a few months ago and am still paying for. To demand perfection from everyone else when I cannot offer it myself is foolish, and life is too short to waste it on being upset over something like this.

1. Stopped with a fully-exposed side of the car, making a situation where an oncoming vehicle can slam into the driver or passenger door head-on more likely.

My mother asked me a question during our most recent phone call that tech bloggers and pundits have discussed for well over a decade: Is it a good thing to teach kids how to code in school?

On the surface, the most obvious answer to this question is a simple "Yes", but I wanted to know why my mum asked this question, given that she doesn't even own a computer and sees them as conveniences, but not essential.

If more people can write code, then why wouldn't a company just replace programmers after a couple of years to keep costs low?

Ah … the IBM Way™ of running a business.

The question came about as I was describing the philosophy that I adhere to when writing code and how it can create friction with management teams who expect absolute obedience from their people. So, with this in mind, the question could probably be phrased like:

Aren't you worried that you will be replaced with a younger person who knows the basics of coding and won't question authority?

Short answer to this question is "No" and I would encourage everyone to learn even a little bit about how to make computers work for them rather than the other way around. There are professional data analysts who earn six figures a year just because they discovered the power of VLOOKUP in Excel and launched themselves into a new career as a result. There are musicians who learned a dozen commands in Python to create a custom pattern synthesiser which resulted in a long career. There are kids all over the world with beat up computers who discover that a little bit of PHP can be the start of a career writing plugins for many of the most popular website engines that are currently in use. With just a little bit of knowledge, computers transform from "magical black boxes" to "tools that enable work to be done". If someone learns a little bit and makes a little money, they are free to decide whether they take the plunge to build their skillset or move on to other things.

An example I gave to my mother went along the lines of "How is learning to code any different from learning a language?" Is anyone threatened when there's another human who can speak (or sign) a language? Most of us can communicate with our mouths, hands, and even eyes. If a billion people were to learn Esperanto, would that be a net negative for anybody who is currently fluent in that tongue? At the very least, it would open up a new market for art and culture.

Going further, we all have our first languages. Some people use it better than others, and those who put it to great use earn the greatest benefits.

So … no. I am not worried at all when schools teach kids how to write code. I am not worried at all if management is upset when I refuse to do something the way they want because it conflicts with a philosophy I adhere to. I am not worried at all if I am replaced, as it's bound to happen eventually. What I am worried about is people not having the opportunity to learn a skill that may help them solve a problem they'll face at some point in life.

Believe it or not, the average amount of footage collected for each YouTube video that I have published to date consumes about 215GB of data. Some of the longer trips have exceeded 500GB while some of the shorter videos barely used 10% of that maximum. Of course, it goes without saying that the longer a trip is, the more footage there will be simply from the fact that a camera affixed to the windshield will be recording everything it sees while the car is in motion. However, it has become increasingly clear over the past couple of months that having cameras record things willy nilly is no way to make videos that people want to see. There needs to be a little more thought put into the effort.

Generally when I am exploring the map in search of destinations, I make use of satellite imagery and street-views to plan stops. Parking lots will be marked, photo locations will be tagged, and basic ideas will be considered. If there are not too many people and the location is far enough away from buildings and airports, I'll make some basic plans for the drone. If the weather is forecasted to be nice, I'll find places where the 360˚ camera might be mounted to the car for situational shots. Will the walking path be interesting? That's where a gimbal will be used to reduce any camera shake that might spoil an otherwise unrepeatable moment¹. The rough plan then sits in my head until we start reaching locations.

This has been semi-workable but, unfortunately, a number of shots tend to be completely forgotten about until after the opportunity has passed. This results in videos consisting mostly of dashboard footage, which is primarily used to convey a sense of distance and space to anyone watching on YouTube². Something better is required.

While investigating various ways to improve the stuff I share on YouTube, I started watching videos from people who work with video professionally. Each one of them says the same thing: make a shot list.

While I have been doing this mentally, they strongly suggest putting it down on paper and writing out a sequence. This allows a person to look over the shots to ensure a consistent flow. If there is a story being told, doing this will also allow a person to consider whether a particular scene should be shot one way or another … or both ways with the final decision being made in post-production. These are perfectly sensible suggestions. So, with all this said, one of my goals for this month will be to make shot lists for all YouTube videos going forward.

There are some considerations to take into account, though. The lists need to:

• aim for at least 5 minutes of video
• dashcam footage cannot exceed 1/5th the length of the video
• there must be "action shots" of Ayumi doing her thing at each destination
• if the drone can be used, there should be at least one shot that could not be done with another camera (not just something recorded from "on high")
• at least two cameras must be used

This list will likely get longer as I continue to hammer down the format of the episodes, but it's a good place to start. There have been a number of times where I have kicked myself during the post-production process because there was a particular shot that I had made a mental note for but completely missed while at the site, usually due to some sort of distraction. With a written down shot list, there will be less risk of missing an opportunity to record something interesting. If I can maintain this for the month of January, there's a high probability that I will continue to make lists for all future productions, improving the quality of the videos that are shared online.

At some point, I will need to also make a plan for how to get better shots while using extension poles, as there's a lot of interesting things that can be done when you have a camera on a stick.

1. It's hard enough asking a person to do something twice. Good luck asking a puppy to repeat an action!

2. A lot of the dashcam footage is sped up and sliced to make it more interesting, but there's only so much of it that can be used.

People have tried to make a lot of analogies for life over the years and so many of them fail to capture the entirety of the human experience. Despite what Tom Hanks might suggest, life is not like a box of chocolates. Nor is life a dance. Nor is it briefer than a ballad sung by legendary rocker Meatloaf. Life, if it can be compared to anything, is a giant domino effect.

This line of thinking ran through my mind today as I wondered what would have happened had I not moved to an apartment north of Tokyo.

• I would not have joined the church I attend, which means …
• I would probably not have met some remarkable people, which means …
• I would probably not have joined various Bible study groups, which means …
• I would probably not have had the opportunity to develop meaningful friendships with the people who I look forward to seeing several times each week.

The argument could be made that I could have met other people and joined other groups had I attended a different church, and that's certainly true. It would be a different domino chain, though. Because, had I not joined the church I attend, then …

• I would not have met Ayumi, as she was at a pet shop in Adachi, between the church and my apartment. Which means …
• I would not have learned that she dislikes public transit. Which means …
• I would probably not have invested the time and money at a driving school. Which means …
• I would probably not have earned a Japanese driver's license. Which means …
• I would almost certainly not have a bright yellow Daihatsu Copen.

Another argument could be made that I would have likely chosen to get a car if I had a different dog, as there are no vets around my house nor is it particularly easy to get around with public transit in that part of the country. This is a possibility, but it's not likely that I would have stumbled across the plethora of videos on YouTube featuring people driving their Daihatsu convertibles with a puppy in the passenger seat. Before settling on the Copen, I was seriously considering a Honda Fit or a Daihatsu Mira e:S as they are cheaper and easy to find at a dealership.

Of course, if I had not picked up a Copen, then I could not have …

• learned how to edit video
• started a YouTube channel
• attended ウーパーワールド, a car show dedicated to Daihatsu Copens
• attended ワンコペン, a get-together involving people who drive Copens and have puppies
• and so many other things …

Again, some might say that I could have brought Ayumi – or a different dog – to different events in a different car, and that I could have started a YouTube channel irregardless of the vehicle … but there are a whole lot of IFs required to make it all fit together. Had any one of the dominoes that resulted in a decision above not fallen, then this year would look different.

Heck, had I taken my sister's advice and returned to Canada for a couple of months from February, then pretty much nothing that happened this year would have come to pass as it would not have made sense to move into an apartment so close to flying half a world away.

Life sure is interesting.

Nozomi passed away almost a year ago. Every so often I find it hard to believe how quickly the time has gone, but the feeling is always the same. She deserved a longer life and a better ending than what she received. I can only pray that all dogs truly go to heaven and she is at peace now. Every so often people will see my phone and remark that the dog they see is not Ayumi. I let them know that her name was Nozomi and that she was a very special friend.

The picture on the lock screen was taken on August 2nd, 2014 and it remains one of my most cherished photos. It was taken during a particularly difficult period, but it always brings a smile to my face. Nozomi's bright eyes and ever-present smile communicated everything I needed to hear. It still does. The photo on the main pages was taken six years later, on November 22nd, 2020. Nozomi was ten years old by this point and was quietly dealing with a medical condition that would not be diagnosed until four months later, when it almost killed her. For so much of her life, she was incredibly patient. She rarely put up a fuss and she looked forward to every opportunity to spend time with the people around her.

Her photos remain on the phone because I haven't yet been able to give her up to the past. Yes, Ayumi is also a special puppy with a special place in my heart, but she's not a replacement for Nozomi. Close friends cannot be replaced, nor should they be. But every so often I wonder if I should change the lock screen image for the first time since 2014, or the main image, which has been static since the day it was taken three years ago. Is it time to move on?

The answer is obvious, but the execution is difficult. Part of me knows that changing these images, which captured just a moment of tranquility with a good friend, would be akin to leaving much of the last 16 years in the past. Perhaps that's the thing I should be doing, but it's not the thing I want to be doing.

To say that Ayumi and I are spending a lot of time in the car would be an understatement as the odometer passed the 5,000km milestone this weekend as we made our way through Gifu Prefecture on our way to Fukui.

Doing some quick math, the car was driven off the lot just before 11:00am on October 19th and this milestone was hit at 10:19am on December 3rd. That works out to the car moving about 4.6339 kph for the duration that I've had it. Considering how much time the vehicle spends parked, this isn't bad at all.

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.

1. Autobacs is an auto-focussed chain store in Japan.

2. Inubosaki Lighthouse.

Ayumi and I made our first road trip in a car yesterday, driving just over 400km from our apartment in Chiba prefecture down to the house in Aichi. This happened to also be the first time that I have driven a car since obtaining a Japanese driver's license. The Daihatsu Copen that I've requested will not be ready until mid-October so, as I have a few appointments that cannot be postponed, we made the trip in a relatively new Toyota Yaris.

All in all, the drive went well. What stands out from the trip isn't the 9-hours of travel that was required, nor the heavy rain that dropped visibility down to 50 meters on a busy highway, nor the hundreds of bends and curves on the narrow mountain roads in Nagano while lightning flashed overhead. Instead the topic that comes to mind is the amount of distractions caused by all the technology in the vehicle, including the frustrating futility of using Google Maps for directions.

As this was to be not only the first long drive with the puppy, but the first drive, a plan was made to make the first half of the trip on the standard roads. This would mean hitting more red lights, navigating narrow roads, dealing with more trains, and watching for more pedestrians. However, this would also be a good way to get acquainted with the car while having the most flexibility to stop in the event that Ayumi or I needed a break. If we could make it from the apartment to Nagano's Lake Suwa in a reasonable amount of time, a decision could be made about whether to stay on the standard roads or switch to the toll highways.

Sadly, we didn't make it to Lake Suwa.

The route that Google Maps provided looked pretty good. It would have us circle the outside of Tokyo, going through Saitama and Gunma prefectures before reaching Nagano. The roads were not particularly busy and we made good time for the first hour and a half. There were a number of very narrow roads that we had to travel down, which was not much of a problem, but every time I crossed the white line at the edge of the road to make space for oncoming traffic the car would first try to nudge me back onto the road and start beeping. At first the reason for the beeps was a mystery, but several kilometres of narrow roads offered plenty of opportunity to trace the nature of the complaint down.

Another complaint that the car made during the trip started to appear after driving for more than two hours; it really wanted me to pull over and take a break. While I can see the benefit of these safety features, I found them to be more of a distraction than a helpful aid. Perhaps I am just not accustomed to cars telling drivers what to do.

Car-nudging aside, the primary issue with the journey was Google Maps on the iDevice. The GPS was not accurate enough, often showing the car as facing the wrong direction or being 50~100 metres behind its actual location. This made it difficult to know which road to turn onto at times and resulted in a few wrong turns. However, the failures that really pushed the app into the trash bin, though, happened while the puppy and I were going through Gunma.

The map and the spoken directions said to "turn left at the next light", which I did only to hear the equivalent of "Turn around, stupid. You turned one intersection too early." The first time this happened, I noticed there was a large park just down the road and followed it anyway so that Ayumi and I could stretch our legs. This turned out to be an excellent accident as Ayumi and I both enjoyed the green grass opportunity to interact with other puppies.

After leaving the park we followed Google Maps again to turn down the correct road and continue towards Lake Suwa. It was at this point the map stopped updating altogether. When it came back to life two kilometres later, I was told to turn around. Given that we were not yet in the deep mountains where one might offer a lack of sky as a reason for the failure, I pulled over and exited the application. The car does have a navigation system, but I was hoping to not use it as car manufacturers make some bizarre UI decisions. However, being in the middle of uncharted territory without a map, there was no other option. Ayumi was sleeping and the sun had almost completely set, making a trip to the park surrounding Lake Suwa illogical. Also, as we had just enjoyed a little walk a little earlier, there didn't seem to be any reason to travel to that place anymore. So I punched in the name of the neighbourhood where my house sits and hoped that Toyota's map would not fail me.

It didn't.

The navigation system offered a route that would get us to the house within four-and-a-half hours with the help of two toll highways. Again, as Ayumi was asleep next to me, I simply followed the directions for a non-stop drive from Gunma into Aichi. Along the way we encountered some incredible lightning storms, heavy rain that dropped visibility to 50 metres on a crowded toll highway, sleepy truck drivers, crazy-long tunnels through mountains, and sleepy villages. All in all, it was a pleasant drive; one that I look forward to making again in my own car a little later this year.

We arrived at our destination a little over 10:30pm, almost exactly nine hours after we left the apartment. The puppy was happy to get out of the car and have another walk in a nearby park. I was happy to get out and stretch my legs, too.

My car does not have a navigation system installed, nor does it even have a place for one¹ so, if the phone's GPS is going to be consistently this inaccurate, I'll need to invest in some paper map books².

All in all there were far more positives than negatives with this trip. The puppy was incredibly good in the car and she clearly prefers this mode of transportation over the busses and trains that we used to take. This was my biggest concern given the amount of work – and money – that went into earning a Japanese driver's license and buying a car. I did bring the camera mounting kits that I plan on using for the upcoming YouTube channel, but these won't be used until the personal car arrives. While I could certainly record in the rental, it's probably best not to do too much at once when getting back behind the wheel for the first time in 20+ years. It doesn't make sense to complain about the car itself being distracting when having camera equipment set up would be no different.

Onwards and upwards.

1. I would need to order the special mounting kit that includes a replacement dashboard insert … which I am not interested in doing.

2. Online support resources tend to suggest resetting the phone to factory in order to resolve this issue, but I'll be darned if I do this while driving. It's not a 5-second process to restore a phone, nor should it be a viable solution given the sophistication of modern software.