I know this blog entry has been a long time coming, and sorry about that, but in terms of travel you haven’t missed anything; we’re still in Nagoya.  The process of shipping a vehicle takes a bit longer than just the time for the crossing, and we hadn’t really taken that into account with our planning.  It has however - and this seems to be a recurring theme for our trip - turned out spectacularly well!

Steve, head of Japan Car Exports, as well as helping us immensely with the shipping, has sorted us out with somewhere to stay and been an all-round legend.  In return we’ve been able to help out doing some work for him while he has two of his staff away driving a similar route to ours in a minivan (I’ll stick to the Land Rover thanks).  It’s actually been a lot of fun driving little K-trucks around his yard, preparing and loading them for shipping, and we now have a good bank of random knowledge about these funky little vehicles!

Loading a container

The sea of trucks

Through Steve we also seem to have been adopted into the Canadian expat community and we just keep meeting really interesting, generous people.  One of the first guys we were introduced to was Lowell (a fellow Fellow of the RGS!) who has a seemingly endless supply of great stories, often from his work with Hope International.   He was just finishing a new house and needed a shed built, so we dug out our best carpentry skills and got to work!  Although we managed to drag ourselves away from toiling in the Japanese humidity to head out with him to a traditional Japanese bath and also to a lovely spot at the river near Toyota.

The shed that Team Latitude built

Down by the river

Lowell invited us to give a presentation about our trip to the Tokai Japan Canada Society, and it was a lot of fun talking to a bar full of rowdy Canadians, and less rowdy Japanese!  It turned out to be a very productive evening as the society very generously agreed to sponsor us, and we also got an invite to repeat our presentation at an English speaking cafe a couple of days later.  At both events we met lots more really cool people, and it’s that which has really made our time in Nagoya fly by.

Presentation from the TJCS

We’re set to leave though, having picked up flights yesterday.  Spike leaves tomorrow to catch up with some friends before Roxy’s ready for collection, and Pete and I will follow on Saturday.  We’ve all got brief stop-overs in Taipei, which should be pretty cool!

We spent this evening at Steve’s house for his young daughter’s birthday party, and she was very reluctant to let Spike leave.  It’s a good job we have a lot still to look forward to, or we might be equally reluctant to say goodbye!

Happy Birthday Emma!

- David

Playing on the iPod: ‘Baba O’Reilly’ by The Who