Hello, my name is Wes and I am currently based in middle of nowhere Japan. I lived in MN from 99-2009 prior to moving to Japan to teach English with my wife for a bit. We will be returning to MN sometime this August and I am taking a proactive look at getting a used WRX. My first car was a Subaru 1985 GL-10 turbo station wagon. Loved that car. 9 Different cars later this is what I have in Japan. It's a decent car. It gets about 40 miles to the gallon. Oh, it's the silver car/truck thing in the background, not the NSX. (maybe someday) The silver car is actually my wife's now, I have a Mazda Laputa turbo. (currently no picture) So yeah. I live in the middle of nowhere, the least populated state in Japan, and it's rather nice. Though I miss actual civilizations. My wife and I lived in a town of 8,000 people for a year before we upgraded to one of the huge towns. 50,000. Crazy! I love telling the people here that Minnesota is 62 times bigger than Tottori, the state I live in now. More people live in Minneapolis than in all of Tottori. I am very eager to move back to MN, I have not been back in over 2 years. Looking over some of the pictures here I have recognized quite a few of the locations. Good memories. So that's pretty much it. I plan on continuing to lurk till I get back, snag a full time job and track down a car. Thanks.
Welcome... You should start a bidness importing JDM parts for us... Check out the events section when you get back we would enjoy meeting you in person.
Thanks everyone! I am counting down the days till I am back. 120 or so now. Yeah Tottori is about 4 hours to the east of Hiroshima. But with the crazy slow speed limits here it is closer to 5 hours.
Thanks everyone! I have been trying to think about how to discuss the radiation in Japan without sounding like a total jerk. I feel really bad for everyone that was and will be affected by the earthquake and resulting power plant malfunction. We are quite a good ways away from the area. (about the same distance from Mpls to Chicago.) But we still got at least 1 phone call or email from each member of our family in the days following the disaster. Each one telling us that we MUST return home right away. This all happened less than a week after our son was born, so we were not exactly in a traveling state. And even though we told them many many times that everything was rather far away. I had to endure quite a few long Skype calls with the mother in law crying and telling us we had to leave Japan. It was crazy. A few local foreigners left for a few weeks while people were still trying to figure out what was going on. My wife and I were worried about losing our jobs if we left. (We didn't believe that is was dangerous were we are located, but we would have left job or not if we did think it would affect us.) However I am drifting futher away from the question. How are the levels now? That is actually a very good question, depending on who you ask and where you go to get your news. Inside Japan, every believes that the main threat is over and that the plant is fully shut down. It does not even come up in topics at work anymore. Outside of Japan people seem to believe that things are getting worse. Recent reports that I have read say that the plant is warming up again. The temp is still below the level where the plant is considered active again. But the temperature is rising slowly and constantly. As for what I believe, I am not sure who to trust. Regardless that whole area will be quite devoid of life for a long time. Such a distaster.
