Farewell little Green Machine

It's the end of an era, time to say goodbye and start feeling nostalgic already...

No more Green Machine. Our little Mitsubishi Toppo, K-car, crazy four door (only one rear seat door on the passenger side, and one door at the back), too tall, tin-pot, manual greeeen machiiine is officially retired. 

It's reached the end of its economical life, having got too old, and having too many problems for registering it to be worth the money. 

Kanji told me some time after Christmas that Jiichan had decided to finally get rid of it, and we would be keeping the airstream, the comfy, whomph-door-closing, seven-seater automatic, from the 27th of January. We had that car here anyway, as we had used it to go to Beppu, and just not got around to switching it (I prefer to switch back, because the Toppo was so much easier to park, so it was better for blatting around town, shopping and dropping kids off here and there). I went to take it back today, as it needed to be filled anyway, and Jiichan just said oh no, don't bother switching back, just keep that one.

So I took a few minutes to clear my detritus out of the Green Machine, a little sad that I wouldn't be getting a goodbye blat. Memories poured out of it! The mini mosquito-repellant, because our cars seem to sit in a mosquito pit and there are always a few in the car whenever we go somewhere (and the spray in the glovebox for the same reason)... an old portable baby table seat and an old baby carseat sun visor that sat in the miniature 'boot'.. Amy's flyer from the salon ads.... the vacuum cleaner (and memories of Amy removing her shoes to climb on the seats to vacuum them)... a stack of maps and brochures neatly organized into files that sat in the cupboard above my head and have not been used ONCE since I got the iphone... the instruction booklet with my name in katakana written in Jiichan's hand.... he got the car for us after I scraped the sides of the red Honda too many times trying to get into my driveway (and once, very memorably, when I slammed into a concrete pole backing out of a carpark at Youme town). At the time I refused to use the Stand's vans because they didn't have rear seatbelts and I had two kids by then. So he got me that little thing, which did have rear seatbelts. I don't recall being too impressed, since I wasn't told about and wasn't all that pleased to be moving from my almost-racy, red, four-door sedan. But it's served me well over the year, can almost turn on the spot and can therefore be driven into, and out of, all manner of tight spaces.

I crashed it twice - once in the carpark at Shinsenichiba supermarket over the road from the Stand - I was just passing through, and a car that appeared to me to be turning left, turned right instead, straight into the side of me. The kids were in the car, so it was scary. The second time, I rear-ended a person ahead of me at the lights. The light had gone green and I thought they had moved off but they weren't, then my jandals got tanlged in the pedals and BAM. 

And now, no more. I will try to find a photo sometime...