>>28595013
>>28595861
I live in the boonies here. You definitely want a car (hence everyone owns one). Otherwise it's an hourly bus to the train station that has 1 line that runs hourly to a 10-15min walk to the supermarket. Or you can bike a few miles to the other supermarket.
The problem with american cars in Japan, is that they simply aren't competitive. Japs love a lot of American cars like mustangs, corvettes, etc. And for sports cars, American cars are starting to make in-roads IMO because high HP jap sports cars haven't advanced since 2007 (r35) and other people just like americana and they can afford it.
But for the basic daily drivers & trucks that make up 99% of cars here, it makes no sense to buy american unless you want to throw away money for looks, and most people can't afford to do that. So they buy a kei truck for $9000 (new), or a kei car for $10-12k (new), or they buy used. Used, you can get an insane amount of value here because everything is low-mileage and well-maintained.
The shaken (inspection) price differences, the extra taxes per year, etc. are all pretty minor to me because it's only an extra $100-200/year or something for a nicer car vs a mini kei car. But for people working on a budget of $2,000/month I've been told that adds up and they can't afford it, or it just makes more sense to rent periodically (costco runs 2x/month, trips, etc.) and use public transportation for day-to-day stuff for the city-dwellers.
