Delivery!

Radio silence, I know! Well, unless you follow us on Instagram! But yes, the camper did arrive! Awesome! Here it is showing up on the flat deck. This was back in February, I think?

That is a lot of tongue weight on that trailer!

It arrived right before a sudden snowstorm!

Fortunately we were able to offload it before it really started coming down. I must say that the towing setup it arrived on left a lot to be desired. I think this is what you get when you try and cheap out a bit on car hauling. I really think a lot of weight must have been on that hitch! It probably ought to have at least been a gooseneck trailer.

Without going into the the painful details too much, one cause of delay is the driver's truck breaking down somewhere in Ohio. I guess his DEF heater failed and put the truck into a limp mode! And then he had to wait for parts, etc. At the time I couldn't believe my luck. This delay came right after I had spend so long waiting for a driver to even pick the vehicle up.

Because I was about to head off to work for a very important meeting, I just had a few moments to look inside the camper after it was unloaded. The driver had to jump start it, because the batteries were old and dead. It has two batteries and so it was good to get a quick idea of which battery to jump in order to start the vehicle.

I had arranged to have the camper delivered at the mechanic's. So once said mechanic showed up, I basically rapid fired an explanation of who I was and what the vehicle even was. I think it took him a second to realize that it was indeed THE JAPANESE CAMPER which I had been telling him about for the past month and which had failed to materialize until now.

Now we were on the same page, but I needed to make haste and get out of there. The mechanic gave me the go ahead to park it inside of his shop. Because he works only on diesels, the vehicles he works with are usually pretty sizable and his bay doors are pretty big. This was good because I needed to quickly figure out how to drive this incredibly peculiar vehicle.

I'm pretty sure I immediately tried to enter the cab from the left side of the vehicle, because I'm completely used to American cars that of course have the steering wheel on the left. It was kind of enjoyable to make that sort of mistake. It definitely confirmed that this was not a normal vehicle.

Running over to the other side, I hopped in. I knew I was dealing with a 5-speed but I honestly knew little else. I played around with the shifter a bit, felt the clutch pedal, and just tried to establish myself in space. It felt pretty funny, and quite tiny in there. The vehicle was already running because the driver hadn't shut it off after unloading it from the trailer. If I stalled it...I'd have to jump start it again!

I tried to be overly cautious with everything, making sure I was in the proper gear so I could maneuver the incredibly short distance into the shop. Even with such a short distance to go, I realized that the visibility behind isn't too great. Complementing this short challenge was a lack of power steering (mentioned in prior blog posts). Still, the overall lightness of the vehicle meant I could, even with a little bit of fore or aft movement, turn the wheel easily enough.

My curiosity got the better of me when I started fiddling with the transfer case lever. I recall noticing that the front hubs were in the "locked" position for some reason. I put them to unlocked, and also tried to make sure the transfer case was in 2WD. Of course, that meant popping into 4WD first. A bit of a mistake, because I had a heck of a time getting back to 2WD. There's a small light on the dash that indicates 4WD, and I had a heck of a time getting it to go away.

After much fiddling, the light shut off, and I could tell the shift lever was in 2WD. This meant I could reverse a bit to ensure the system was fully uncoupled. I recalled from my childhood that older '90s 4WD vehicles needed to be reversed a bit after coming out of 4WD. Not sure if that was actually needed, but I wanted to be safe!

Right, so I then proceeded to make a multi-point turn to get the camper into the shop. Phew!

Safe and sound in the shop

From there, I handed the mechanic the keys and ran off to work. I knew I'd return in a handful of hours. I couldn't possibly stay at work all day and miss an opportunity to start looking over our camper.

Delays on delays

It's been a while since the last update, and fortunately I can say with a lot of relief that our camper has finally made it to the USA, and also cleared customs! It's now legally in the country!

I really need to reflect back on that positive note a lot more than I have been. Because prior and after that big event, I probably got way more involved in the process than was needed.

From a "how-to" perspective I would say that if your import broker is capable, you shouldn't really have to do much of anything after the vehicle has been exported. There is a bit of a hand off between the auction broker and import broker that you need to be involved in, if only to make sure things are going smoothly.

One key thing to pay attention to at this stage is the contents of the bill of lading. You want to make sure that the "Manufacture Year", if it's at all captured on there, is very much correct!

For our camper, which was indeed manufactured November 1994, the bill of lading mistakenly had listed "1995". The vehicle is technically a 1995, but it's not helpful to advance the manufacture year by a whole year! This could have proved disastrous if US customs decided to play hardball. The camper was slated to arrive at port in February, 2020. This at the very least put it in the right year if "1995" was taken as the gospel.

In conjunction with that, the export certificate (the very official document that's basically the next best thing to a title) showed the first date of registration as March 1995. With that in mind, it really meant that there was only a single month of "grey area". The vehicle could not be any newer than March 1995, and I was importing in February 2020. Meaning that one might suggest it could have been manufactured in February 1995 and there would not be any proof otherwise.

This leads into a broader discussion of how all US ports are different. The same set of laws govern all of them I suppose. But how they are all interpreted, and to the severity of which they are interpreted, varies from port to port.

My broker is used to working with the Port of Tacoma. Apparently they are quite notorious for cracking down on importers of Japanese vehicles. It makes sense given that they are a thoroughfare for them, being one of the quickest ports to receive vehicles from Japan. So it was very reasonable then for my broker to raise issue with the date mismatch. They didn't want the vehicle to get caught up in customs purgatory.

Unfortunately, after the vehicle has departed Japan there is nothing which can be done. I attempted to have the bill of lading corrected, but I could not do so. At this point, I had a limited number of days to get all of my evidence in order. The only real counter-action to this issue was trying to produce some convincing paperwork which illustrated the date of manufacture.

There are a few services for that, but they really only produce some PDF document which doesn't hold much weight. I opted to use one since it was only $40, and it honestly made me feel better to have regardless. According to my auction broker, there are more official services in Japan which cost a lot and can dig into vehicle history to produce official documents.

There are also another "option" of looking at the seat belt tag. I haven't confirmed this myself, but some Japanese vehicles have a tag on the belt which is date coded. It is usually only off by a month or two. So it could have helped convince customs that the vehicle was nearer the intended November 1994.

Right, so with the resolution of that on the backburner until it did arrive at port, I spent my remaining time buying parts (of course) and tracking the movement of the camper on marinetraffic.com. I learned a bit after it left Japan that the location beacon (as I called it) only functioned when near land. Otherwise it was up to GPS. But for GPS location of certain ships you have to pay a fee. Not needing to do that, I checked in every day or so until I saw a new position.

I believe it was Hoegh's own website which indicated an arrival date of January 19. That wasn't accurate as far as arrival in the US, but actually indicated when it would show up at the first port of destination. In this case it was the Panama Canal!

Because it was literally up against land during this transitional period, I was able to watch it for a few days in a row. Eventually it made it through and sailed on. I expected it to carry on to the US, but it made an unexpected (to me) stop in Jamaica of all places.

From there, it traveled north and I wondered if it would stop again. Certainly it did, in Florida, and possibly even elsewhere. I sort of stopped watching after a point.

Finally, it had completed its lengthy journey and arrived at the Port of Baltimore.

Here is where some more learning occurred!

As I was saying earlier, all ports are different. There was much insistence from my import broker on the arrival packet of documents being physically presented and stamped by the customs authority during vehicle retrieval. This is true at some ports, but not all. As it turns out, the Port of Baltimore opts to electronically process the whole document packet. There is no physical stamping of the packet as you'd find in Long Beach or Tacoma. That certainly made things easier albeit the amount of angst I underwent was a bit much.

I don't have all the details of what went down, but I think the overall process was something like:

1. Import broker compiles all the needed documents, with signature (recall they had power of attorney).
2. Document package and pickup order is submitted to the driver doing the pickup.
3. Driver gets vehicle, shows the packet to the customs folk, and drives away!

Simple! If I had known it was this way, I would have kept my mouth shut and not gotten involved.

Getting a driver to pull the vehicle from the port was another effort unto itself. I had the help of a shipping company to find said driver. We were up against the "free storage" clock, which was a total of 5 days, not including days the port was closed (Sat/Sun). 5 days wasn't a lot, but we couldn't plan pickup earlier because you don't really know when the vehicle is ready for pickup until after customs releases it. It's just hard to time.

So with 5 days on the clock, we soon found that getting a driver who:

1. ...could drive stick (!?!?)
2. ...had a TWIC card and understood basic port pickup procedure
3. ...had a transport that could load our camper 

...was unlikely. Therefore my shipper opted to split up the responsibility. We just wanted the thing out of port before it started racking up storage fees.

Apparently my shipper had a guy with a TWIC card who could easily move it from the port to a separate storage facility (at $10/day). Some communication snafus meant we'd be running a few days late, but they managed to get it out of the port and into storage. Great! It was nice of them to also shoot me a few photos of it resting in the storage facility (though honestly it just looks like a parking lot with a fence?).

So close...but so far...

Someone wrote all over the windshield! :)

From there, we needed to get the long-haul driver set up. The challenge there was still to find a carrier who would drive so far and also have a trailer able to load the camper. Most long-haul car transports are only meant for regular sized vehicles, being those standard double-decker trailers you see on the road.

At the time of writing this, our current driver proved to be unreliable and never picked up the vehicle. Now the hunt is on for another. I hope the transport price will be a bit less as well because we aren't rushing necessarily to get a driver to move it.

Exported!

Over the past month I've been ordering parts and trying to learn what I can about our tiny camper. But until just recently there hasn't been much movement on the other side of the globe. The export broker arranged for shipping and moved the Fargo to port. From there the vehicle just waits for its spot in line to get shipped. The shipping line used by my broker is Hoegh, and depending on what port the vehicle is destined for determines which specific cargo ship it will have to get on.

Exactly what ship our Fargo would get on was a bit murky. If this wasn't our first import maybe we could have predicted it. In the past week I've been able to finally get some more clarity. This is specifically due to receiving the bill of lading from my export broker. Among the information on the BL are these items:

1. The contents of the shipment (our vehicle).
2. Who's shipping it (our auction broker).
3. From where (port of Kawasaki)
4. To where (port of Baltimore).
5. To whom (our home address).
6. The size and weight of the shipment.
7. The departure date (28-Dec)
8. The shipping vessel (Hoegh Africa).

Item 3 I am reasonably certain on, though it conflicts with what I've been saying about it coming from the port of Yokohama. Granted, both are in the Bay of Tokyo. It's not important for me to know but is still interesting either way. There's also mention of Osaka on the BL which further confuses me.

Port of Kawasaki

Tokyo Bay

Item 4, the destination port, is lacking in specificity because there are a handful of places in the Port of Baltimore that the vehicle could be dumped. My import broker (more on that later) has assured me that I'll get clarity on this as the vehicle nears said destination.

Item 7 was nice to finally see. I could finally grasp when the vehicle would leave Japan. Long story short, it did depart on the 28th of December! That means it's currently a few days into its journey down to the Panama Canal and eventually up to the east coast of the US.

Item 8 is a fun piece of information. It's the shipping vessel that the vehicle will travel on. Based on my location and possibly time of year, it found a home on the Hoegh Africa. Hoegh is a Norwegian shipping company that specializes in auto transport. Their carriers are great because they are fully enclosed. This means minimal salty, corroding air will reach the vehicles on board. I know it's still going to get a bit dirty and gross, but it surely beats a vehicle sitting outside on a ship, rusting away for a month! That's not to say there aren't a zillion videos of enclosed ships capsizing or sinking or tossing around their contents...and some of them are Hoegh ships!

Hoegh Africa

One cool part of Hoegh, and just knowing the ship in general is that I can get an at-a-glance update on the status of the ship. There are two websites. One is marinetraffic.com which basically provides GPS coordinates for all shipping traffic. Oddly, and for reasons I don't understand, Hoegh Africa is "out of range". Here's its last location that I could find:

Last known (to me) location

Of course, I assume it hasn't sunk. I'll keep checking back to see if it pops up again. There are plenty of other ships that publish their location when they're in the open ocean. Why this one isn't right now, I have no idea.

Right. So, the BL is indeed not that complicated but it's super critical to have it before the shipment of the vehicle. Not so much because it's needed to ship the vehicle (which is true) but because one needs to file a second piece of paperwork before the vehicle disembarks from the origin port. And that second piece of paperwork, called the ISF (import security filing), requires information contained within the bill of lading.

Allegedly, people can easily get into some hot water if they don't file the ISF before the vehicle disembarks. I hear that it's not the end of the world to file the ISF a few days after the vehicle leaves the origin port but generally this is frowned upon.

I opted, as do many, to solicit the services of an import brokerage company. This is a stateside company which specializes in doing a bunch of paperwork to make US Customs happy with what you're bringing in. That includes the ISF!

The benefit of using an import broker is that you're just not responsible for having to file so many different documents with different entities. An import broker is very much recommended if you're never done this before or even if you do it semi-regularly. There are many ways it can go wrong and the worst thing that can happen is having the CBP quarantine your vehicle and impose fines and fees while to try to figure everything out.

The import broker takes power of attorney (PoA) which means they can act as you for much of the import process. You still have to be on your toes a bit. They need certain pieces of information that aren't communicated in the BL.

For example, it's worthwhile to explain to them what your vehicle actually is. It's not reasonable to assume they are huge car nerds and can decipher what you're buying from the BL. Since our camper was based on a truck chassis, it was important to clarify with them that it should NOT be classed as a truck.

When importing a truck, CBP imposes a 25% duty fee! For most other vehicles it's only 2.5%. Since campers typically "seat" 4 passengers, they are then classifiable as a passenger vehicle. Yes, the Fargo was built on a truck chassis, but it's not a two-seater truck anymore. But again, that's not necessarily clear even from the auction listing which stated "Isuzu Fargo Truck". It doesn't even say "camper" or anything like other campers tend to have on their description.

A stock Isuzu Elf truck. This would get a 25% import duty applied.
But when converted to a typical camper, it should only receive a 2.5% duty! 

With the classification sorted, and all the other BL info transcribed over to the ISF form, my import broker was able to file said ISF. Great!

From there, we enter another phase of waiting. It won't be until Hoegh Africa gets closer to the destination that Hoegh sends an email with confirmation of the arrival date. Per the BL, it's around the 1st of February. But that can easily change by a few days as I understand.

Before that happens, there will be two additional documents to file. One is for the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and the other is for the DOT (Department of Transportation). Apparently I play some part in completing them. So I have that to look forward to. But fortunately the import broker will help walk me through it!

Beyond that, I have to organize inland transport. Fortunately I have both done this before with another vehicle purchase (just within the US), and I received a recommendation for an inland transport company that has worked with imported vehicles.

The benefit of the latter is that there's some extra finesse needed on part of the inland transport company when fetching a vehicle from a port. The instructions from the import broker tell me that a visit to a customer service office in the port, and to the CBP office in or near the receiving port is required during pickup of the vehicle. At the last destination, the CBP office, seemingly four things must be on hand:

1. Delivery order (from the import broker)
2. Entry packet (from the import broker)
3. Release paperwork (from the port customer service office)
4. All original documentation provided by the seller (via the auction broker)

I'm a little murky on the specifics of each of those things. Items 1, 2 and 4 will be mailed to me. I can't visit my import broker's office very easily to pick them up otherwise. They're over in Seattle at the Port of Tacoma.

Item 3 is something I also have to rely on the inland transporter to do for me I think. But really I'm not sure about that either.

Item 4 is possibly the export certificate and/or some sort of pink slip. I really don't know actually. When I find out I'll write about it here!

So for now, I have to wait a few weeks until it's time for the next significant round of communication!

Congratulations!

I definitely felt a flash of panic as I read the title of the email.

"Congratulations. You are now the owner of an Isuzu Fargo."

it was the "Congratulations" that set me off. You know how you wake up and for a moment you don't remember anything from the prior day? That was very obvious in this moment.

I don't want to get too far into my own emotions (not enough time...) but it was definitely a bit of a roller coaster to bid on and win a Japanese car that was (is still...) literally in Japan. For the first time!

Alright, so upon winning the bid, the auction broker definitely moves into action quickly. There's basically no going back at this point, unless possibly you can say "hey, just relist it right away". But that costs a few hundred bucks. And I don't know why you'd want to do that unless you suddenly learned that you didn't have enough money to pay the full fare.

The auction houses require you to get that vehicle the heck out of there when you win.

Japanese campers create a bit of a dilemma. They are usually a bit too large for a car transporter (at least, those in Japan which I guess are smaller?). So they need to be driven off the lot, and driven somewhere else.

Normally that would be straight to the port, where it sits and waits for shipping.

But my camper had an issue with the power steering, plus any other unknown issues that the initial inspection failed to show.

So the best course of action was to have it sent to a mechanic. My auction broker uses a specific mechanic that is down by the port of Yokohama. This makes sense because that port is typically where many vehicles are sent from when destined for the USA.

I had good faith in their mechanic and so I was on board to have it moved down there.

But oh...how far did it have to travel?

1,200 dang kilometers.

In the heat of it all, I failed to really consider how far away this was. My broker made it clear, but I figured the low bid I was planning to put in at the time would negate that transport distance.

I suppose it did. The fee to move it was pretty reasonable. Whoever did the driving...not of the transport truck...but of the camper itself, got a little road trip in. Granted, I heard that a ferry was also involved, but was it just between the two major islands?

And the fee and who was driving it wasn't really part of my concern, so much as the genuine possibility that it might break down during said drive. Or blow up or otherwise destroy itself.

It took a few days (or maybe it was a week?) but eventually I got word that the vehicle had shown up at the port mechanic!

This was great, because finally I could get some piece of mind about the condition of the vehicle. It was also my chance to get any maintenance done at the hands of a skilled mechanic who knew how to work on these vehicles.

And not only that, but the mechanic also took a ton of photos for me. I don't know if this was part of the deal, but I was very happy to receive them!

The photos were much higher resolution than the prior inspection photos, and worlds above the auction listing photos. Whomever your auction broker is, I would recommend trying to nab some better photos before the vehicle makes its way onto the ship. It could also help you identify any issues ahead of time (since you'll be waiting at least a month).

My main request to the port mechanic was having the power steering pump evaluated. Granted, I didn't want a bunch of tinkering to occur. I really just wanted to source a new pump and have it replaced, if the cost was reasonable.

Well, it turned out to be what I'm sure is reasonable, but still quite expensive. I know the work would have been stellar, but I was trying to keep costs low. I bought this camper for cheap, on purpose!

However, while it was still in the hands of the mechanic I did opt to have him look for a replacement pump. Possibly he could order it and just pack it with the camper when it shipped, or ship it to me. I think it's actually frowned upon to load a vehicle up with spare parts and then export it. Customs doesn't like that ;)

But I wouldn't get a chance to do that either! Apparently, the engine in this vehicle, an Isuzu 2.4 liter 4FG1, carries some very obsolete parts. At least the power steering pump is nowhere to be found. I won't get into my hours and hours of searching, but suffice to say neither me, the mechanic, or my broker could get an angle on a readily available pump.

There are a lot of sites out there for Japanese vehicle parts. My search primarily entailed the following sites:

www.partsouq.com (great diagrams, just put in your VIN)
www.amayama.com (good prices)
www.megazip.net (a good backup)

And yet, none of them carried the pump!

The only option was to order an OEM pump from somewhere (Isuzu?) that seemingly had to fire up their forge tooling again and cast a brand new one. The cost of that was nearly $1000. I even managed to find a few suppliers myself who could give me a quote, and the price was effectively the same. Plus, the lead time was 2 months!

Ultimately I had to come to terms with not getting an OEM pump (though I honestly haven't at the time of writing this...).

From my hours of research, it seems like any near equivalent pump will do, and it's just a matter of creating a proper bracket to attach it in the right place. Easier said that done I figure. But I won't know until I try to sort that out.

After a few days at the mechanic, and an otherwise clean bill of health awarded, I gave the okay to move the Fargo to the actual port. This is where the waiting game would begin!

Indecisiveness

*Disclaimer: I ain't an expert on this. Consult your auction broker for any questions you might have :)

It's way too easy to get excited and buy a vehicle sight-unseen from one of the Japanese auction houses.

Okay, almost sight-unseen. Here is what you're typically presented with when carousing the vehicle auctions in Japan.

It seems like a lot of info to digest, but when it comes down to it, this doesn't tell you much about the vehicle.

From left to right, you immediately get to see:

1. Front and rear images of the vehicle. These are typically low resolution and make it nearly impossible to tell exactly how good of condition a vehicle is in. If the vehicle is filthy and rusted, sure, you can make out that detail. But beyond that, who knows if there are dents or damage otherwise. And it's really tricky for an RV because you're counting on it being watertight, with all the seals and caulk lines being nice.

2. Auction sheet. It's a world unto itself. You can glean a lot from it even if you don't read Japanese. Ideally your broker will translate it for you. There are also many guides to interpreting them if you just search around a bit.

Our Fargo's auction sheet

3. Lot #. Clicking it takes you to a more detailed page for that car.

4. Auction date. When is it up for auction, or was it just recently auctioned?

5. Year/name. This is as it sounds. Though the short form descriptions almost require a decoder ring sometimes.

6. Transmission type and displacement and maybe some other options?

7. Mileage and condition. Condition is based on what the auction house decides. There's way more to it than that. I recommend using your auction broker's interpretation of things as a guide. But typically, if it's 3 or higher (up to 5) then it's worth looking at. 4 and 5 are super good. That's not to say there won't be some major issue, but ideally the car is in reasonable condition.

A quick sidebar: My RV is condition 3.5. This is pretty good, but not the best. A 4 would have been great. But in my limited experience a 4 is going to command some $$$. Plus, they just aren't that common. So holding out for one can take a while. While I don't have the RV in my hands yet, it seems like the interior and exterior are actually really good. Maybe rivaling a 4?

We'll see, of course. The powertrain is possibly causing it to drop down to a 3.5. There is allegedly some rust and some oilyness to the engine. And note there is also a power steering issue that I've yet to understand the true meaning of.

I did take a long look at some ranked 3. But those (especially after getting interior shots) definitely made it clear as to the lower ranking. Maybe the outside was okay but the interior was just very...suspect.

It's ultimately much harder to gauge the true condition on an RV from your computer, compared to a regular auto. There is much more to look at than just the engine and exterior.

8. Pricing. What the starting bid is, and what it sold for. Sometimes it starts at 0 dollars. It's usually irrelevant unless you're talking fancier collector cars or really popular ones. If the starting bid on an RV is $500 there's little chance of it staying down that low. The sold price is kind of weird. It doesn't seem to update quickly, and in addition it sounds like the USS auction houses don't post the sell price regardless.

9. Average price. This is also a bit confusing. It depends on trim and options and condition. So you need to dig through your broker's historic selling prices and try to hash out what the average price really means. It might that value because only one sold. Or two sold, but they were very different prices and then averaged to something in the middle. But that doens't mean you'll necessarily get a vehicle for that price. Again, maybe more fitting for in-demand collector cars, etc.

I will say that the average price did help inform my max bid for my RV. I saw a handful of past prices for the Isuzu Fargo camper and it gave me hope of landing one for much less than the usual going price of an RV.

Okay, so there's enough information to get excited about your potential new RV, but not enough to make a well-informed decision!

So what to do?

Fortunately there is the option of both an inspection and additional photos!

For my RV, I opted for both.

In past cases, I had asked for photos of the interior first. However, because this RV was ranked as a 3.5, I was a bit more hopeful. And the exterior photos looked pretty good, honestly. I had a good feeling about it!

Therefore, I decided to ask for a mechanical inspection first. Any auction broker worth its salt offers mechanical inspections before purchase. You will have to pay for it most likely, but the cost is less than $100 and can save you a world of hurt. Imagine waiting for a month for your RV to arrive and finding out that coolant is leaking into the crank case!

The inspection went quickly and yielded the following info:

battery dead, engine starts one shot, slight vibration at idle, revs fine, no smoke or vibrations, no sludge, coolant ok, non-turbo, oil cap area slightly oily, engine slightly oily but not dripping, engine area surface rust and slight corrosion, tires have 50% slight cracks, spare old but ok, camping section ceiling liner loose in places but does not appear to leak, toilet, no shower, kitchen area double stove, fridge, floor ok, diff area/suspension corrosion and flaking but no holes, boots ok, some paint peeling on exterior, windshield chips small, bedroom area above cabin ok, drivers seat creased and wear but ok, passenger seat ok, dashboard 6 screw holes, ceiling liner dirty, interior ok, ac ok, clutch ok, gears ok, 4wd ok, check lamps ok, lights ok, wipers ok

I really don't want to dissect this whole thing. It's pretty comprehensive honestly. And you're sort of taking the inspectors word for it also. Basically, reading between the lines a bit. when they say something is dirty, or loose, that's definitely on the eye of the beholder. I think that the inspectors are pretty stringent in that regard. It's not covered in filth. It's just not "pristine".

"Engine starts one shot" is a good one though. That means they were able to jump it easily. I am sad about the non-turbo aspect but if I wanted a turbo I'd probably have to wait another year or so for the era of when Japanese diesels had made a bulk of the transition to turbos. Patience would have definitely been a virtue in that case!

The inspector also looked for leaks (per my request) within the camper area. I was nervous about water damage.

Note that they didn't mention power steering. I guess they don't have a good opportunity to drive around a bunch. It's more of an idling inspection. So, that mystery remains to be solved!

So, the inspection panned out better than I expected.

Now what?

Well, I needed further convincing. I was apprehensive about this whole auction/import process. It's just way too uncertain for my personality, haha!

So I asked for some photos. My broker already knew what I was looking for, and kindly ordered (for a few $$) 6 photos of the interior.

The interior was definitely one of the better ones I had seen. And recall that the interior grade was only a "C". So it could have been pretty hit or miss I think. I really appreciated that the cushions looked so good. Here is hoping they don't carry any funky smells ;)

A quick side bar: I made a bit of a rookie mistake not asking for a photo under the vehicle to look for rust. Granted, the mechanic inspection took care of that, but it's nice to see it for yourself.

Right, so normally I would have mulled over the photos and the inspection further. But because the photos came in very close to auction close, and because I further complicated things by not seeing that they had come in until even closer to auction close, my broker took the liberty to put the previously agreed bid in. Their experience with these vehicles and the quality of the interior basically led them to make a bit of an executive decision.

I was a bit freaked out by that. But I think that if they hadn't done that, I wouldn't be writing this blog right now :)

So their decisiveness, despite a lack of my own got me over the decision hump to bid on the camper.

I can't recall the exact sequence of events, but I do remember falling asleep having seen the bidding end. The website is unfortunately a bit delayed to show results, and doesn't let you know what the bid was, or if you won, etc.

With a huge amount of excitement wriggly around in my body, I had a really hard time getting to sleep.

Morning eventually came and I woke to a very specific email that I both dreaded and enjoyed seeing. Dreaded because it was a really big crazy bizarre purchase, and enjoyed because I was still really excited about possibly owning a tiny camper.

I'll paraphrase, but the subject basically said: "Congratulations on your new RV!"

A Fitful Night's Sleep

I had a really hard time falling asleep that night. I knew that a bid was entered on my behalf. And it was a pretty reasonable bid, too. Spending months obsessing over Japanese RVs made me realize that if I wanted to ever own one, I'd have to commit to some serious $$$. 

Well, not that serious in the grand scheme of things. But I couldn't keep lowballing. I'd never win an auction and my auction broker would probably disown me at some point.

But how did I arrive here?

I think it was just good timing, and location, location, location.

Sapporo is the capital of Hokkaido prefecture in Japan. Said prefecture encompasses the entire island of Hokkaido which is Japan's northernmost major island. I've never been there, but my wife and I have been to the island of Honshu twice. Honshu contains the brunt of Japan's better known cities and regions, to my understanding. While we might have some understanding of what Honshu is like, Hokkaido is still quite foreign to us. I would like to check it out some time.

Why bring up Sapporo?

The USS Sapporo, which sounds like some sort of battleship, is actually a giant car auction house located in the city of Sapporo. It's part of the larger Used Car System Solutions auction network. There are apparently 18 other USS auction houses within Japan. From my limited knowledge of Japanese auto auctions, these USS auction houses tend to have the most inventory and turnover compared to other auction houses in Japan.

...all those cars

All that said, USS Sapporo was the auction house where our potential future RV was located.

USS Sapporo is a bit of an interesting location for the fact that it's way up in Hokkaido. Less population means less cars, right? So I think this means that the inventory is a bit smaller. It also means that less people are interested in vehicles that come through.

Why? The key reason is because USS Sapporo does not have a major port from which ocean-going, car-carrying ships tend to dock. If you buy something from USS Sapporo and you want to send it to another country, such as the USA, you'll have to get it transported down to Yokohama (maybe there are other options as well) so it can be loaded on a ship. If one can just get a similar vehicle from a more centrally located auction house in, say, Yokohama, it reduces the distance to port that the vehicle must travel.

With this caveat in mind, it's to be expected then that prices at USS Sapporo be slightly lower than other more centrally located auction houses.

You'd think that with the aforementioned information I'd have obviously selected USS Sapporo for the very reason of getting a lower price but you'd be wrong. I wasn't really cognizant of this fact when I asked to place a bid.

Granted, my auction broker explained this all to me when I inquired about the vehicle.

Did I really take it into consideration? No, because I was blinded by the allure of a small Japanese RV.

So did I heedlessly place a bid and hope for the best? Not before asking for an inspection and copious photos! More on that process next time!

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! 

This is the first entry in a series of many, we hope, wherein we give you insight into the import and ownership of a small RV imported from Japan from two people who have never done this before!

At this stage, we are as curious as you might be.

Who knows what adventures await us?