I’ve made every effort to avoid buying a car in Korea, but I can’t even fathom driving in a city like Tokyo. At any rate, here’s a fascinating look inside the guts of a traffic control center in Tokyo, and looking at this makes me even less interested in driving in either Tokyo or Korea. Anyone have any stories of driving in Tokyo?
The post, which comes from CS Scout Japan, says these guys work in 24-hour shifts. I don’t know about Japan, but in Korea this kind of jobs is highly sought after because its stable.
4 responses so far ↓
1 RandyRain // Jan 15, 2008 at 5:25 pm
I used to live in Tokyo and bought a car during my third year. The thing that always struck me was the number of trucks around me. I always felt like I was in a cave, or….actually, like canyon.
Relative to the cost of living, buying a car is not that expensive in Japan…you can usually find a deal on a Toyota or Honda that’s not bad. The BAD part is the maintaining of the car because they are lots of mandatory inspection type things. I guess you could throw parking and road tolls in as well…you can imagine that isn’t cheap. Gas is usually about ¥120 per liter, which is also crazy.
Ok, I’ve talked myself out of ever moving back to Tokyo and buying a car!
2 Jackson // Jan 15, 2008 at 9:09 pm
You’ve talked me out of the car part but not the Tokyo part. For anyone reading this, I’ll move back to Tokyo in a sec if there’s a writing or scouting gig waiting there for me. Odakyu sen here I come!
Holla!
3 TBot // Jan 16, 2008 at 7:23 am
I can speak from experience here too….not my favorite place to drive. Most people drive really small cars, which might be why the first commenter said he felt like he was in a canyon. It’s true. I got in a fender bender once…we had to drive for several kilometers before we could find an ok place to pull over. It was a mess.
4 Simon Currie // Jan 17, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Tokyo’s a very different city when you are in a car rather than relying just on the vast network of public transport as there are still spots in Tokyo that are not easily reacheable without a car. Then again I don’t want to drive in Tokyo traffic on the main roads nor the super narrow back streets and deal with tiny parking spots. But when I leave Tokyo I’d like to be able to drive, there’s a reason why there are so many Japanese car manufacturers as Japan is car country outside of big metropolis centres.
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