Hear her roar!

Saturday 10th Emi and I sold ours souls to the devil - we went to Costco in Machida. I don't like the idea of handing my money over to some giant all-consuming corporation - I've a dislike for shopping at Tescos in the UK - but somehow the promise of saving a few Yen won over.
To start with it was 1 hours drive away. If you think that is a long way this is 1 hour driving in Japan so about a 20-30 minute journey in most parts of the UK under normal circumstances. When we got there it was clear that the town officials were too busy rubbing their hands at the thought of the all those dollars and yen in their pockets - they had build Costco and a number of other large UK retail park type stores on this long narrow road. This meant that the road was just rediculously busy. And you could only enter the carparks of the stores if you were on the correct side of the road so we had to drive past, turn around in the carpark of another store and join another queue. 20minutes later we were parked up in the Costco.
Next we had to get a membership card. This involved 5 minutes of Japanese banter, Emi signed something and then the Costco representative whipped out some American Express Credit Card information. They chatted for about 15 minutes and then Emi started to fill out the form. I was like "wait up, why do you need an American Express Card?". Apparently we got air miles, discounts at blah blah blah. "What about your other credit card discounts?", apparently these were different. "Is there a membership change for the card, this is one reason why they are not popular in Europe". Well guess what, there was a membership fee of 60 quid a year yet the women selling the card hadn't told Emi before she had started filling out the form. This would result in the person loosing there job in the UK as she was mis-selling something. Eventually after much discussion between myself and Emi and Emi and the Costco representative Emi signed up as the benefits would be worth more than the 60 quid membership fee. It was also at this point that we discovered that Costco in Japan only accepted American Express, Costco Mastercard and cash as payment. Had we know this before we went there would have been a visit to the bank, we only had 50 quid between us. This ended up taking 1.5hours - and we hadn't even entered the shop yet!
Wandered around picking up as few things as possible. The problem was we didn't have much cash and although things were "cheap" everything is in bulk so it is not so cheap. As it was our first visit and the place was very busy it ended up taking about 3 hours to walk around and get through the checkout. Now most of you that know me know I am very intolerant of bad road manors and people doing stupid things (particularly in shops - badly parked trolley etc) so by the end of our shopping trip my blood was at boiling point!
Sunday was much better. Car modifying is very big in Japan, most vehicles have something non-standard fitted to them be it an exhaust system or some alloy wheels. Because of the expense of these parts there are a number of shops that sell used car parts. This isn't like some scrapyard in the UK, these are like a small Autobacs or Halfords selling mostly used parts. I had seen an exhaust system the previous week and decided I wanted it and today was fitting day. Dropped the car off, popped into some nearby shops while we waited and 45 minutes later the car was ready. I paid 150 quid for a full stainless steel exhaust system fitted, the original new price was 420 quid not fitted. It had a dent in the centre silencer, a small dent and a few scratches on the tailbox, otherwise it was as good as new. Not bad me thinks!
Now when I put my foot down I get a subtle roar from the car rather than a mechanical racket - Nissan's strong point is not making tuneful exhaust systems.