The first few days with the Roadster RHT have been lots of fun. It’s definitely much quieter than the softtop and feels slightly more solid. Probably because it’s heavier. The Stormy Blue colour is really great in almost any light except flourescent where it tends to look a bit purply. Unfortunately, this colour shows all kinds of dust and fingerprints and I’m going to go insane trying to keep it looking nice. Compared to my previous 6MT, the 6AT is very comfortable as a daily driver and perfect for Tokyo traffic. The paddle shifts are fun to use but I would say only about 80% as fun as the 6MT. Although I really like the fact that I can easily switch between auto and manual mode whenever I want. This makes driving in traffic jams in Tokyo somewhat bearable. Still, the 6MT has a bit more pep and pickup than the 6AT. The base suspension is ok but too soft and mushy for my tastes. I’ll be getting the springs and sway bars installed soon. Everything else feels very roadsterish. Here’s a brief recap of the last few days.

Saturday: I took the car to the good people at Trendworks to get the carnavi and ETC installed. They were the only guys that would install the cables which would allow the oem bose sound system to work with the Panasonic Navi. I brought the car in at 11am and went to pick it up at 9pm but when I arrived parts of the interior were all over the place. So I had to hang around the area doing nothing for 2 hours until they finished. At around 11pm the job was complete and they went over the check list to make sure all was in order. They did a pretty good job with the installation and I’d highly recommend these guys.

I’m finally getting used to the quirks about this navi but overall was expecting much more from such a high-end system, in particular the voice directions could be timed a bit better. For example, it should tell me to turn right BEFORE I have to turn right not WHILE I’m in the middle of the turn. Duh! The digital tv tuner is completely amazing though.

Although it was pretty late, I was eager to go for a little drive rather than just heading home so I went down to Machida where there’s a drive thru Starbucks open really late. I got home around 3am after stopping by a local combini. Here’s the photo of my RHT in the lot and another photo of my previous NC in the same spot from last year. I have those nice chrome wheels in the closet and still trying to decide if I will put them on my RHT or not. What do you think?

Sunday: I got up fairly late so couldn’t go very far. I went with some friends, who took their own car, to Yokohama to do some shopping but spent most of the day stuck in weekend traffic. I put the top down a few times but it was just too hot. There are still very few RHTs on the streets and I got a few double takes from people while driving by.

Monday: I took the day off work but ended up making some work related phone calls and emails which took up the entire morning. There goes my day trip! So in the afternoon, I went to hang out with some housewives and then in the evening heading to Super Autobacs to get some stuff. I almost ordered a radar system but luckily they couldn’t install it for me on the spot so decided not to get it. Whew! (1) After that I went to Lalaport Toyosu which happened to be closed. Oh well (2) Then headed home via Ginza.

Tuesday: Eddie joined me on a roadtrip out to Mt. Fuji and Asakiri-kogen. He has never been on a road trip in Japan and has only seen Mt. Fuji once despite having lived here for 6 years. He’s also never seen Star Wars either, unbelievable. Anyways, the weather was cloudy with some light rain so we only had a brief moment of “open” couldn’t see Mt. Fuji all day (1) I took the above photo along one of the five lakes (2) in the same spot where I took a photo of my gray NC on one of my first outings with that car.

(1) Later we heading down to Eichi no Mura in Asakiri-kogen where we had a nice farmer’s lunch. It was really good (2) As you can see by the photos, this is not my first time here.

Since it was mostly cloudy there was not much else to do so I drove down to the outlet mall in Gotemba and walked around there for 2 hours. The outlet malls are crowded on weekends but almost dead on weekdays. To get more business they bring Chinese tourists by the bus load to enjoy shopping and a nice view of Mt. Fuji. There were quite a few Chinese shoppers there. When we were leaving, Fuji-san finally showed up and I got these photos while stopped at Ashigara parking area. Eddie has some better photos of my car here.

This weekend, I’ll be heading up to Gunma, and maybe Nikko, for the weekend and hope to get some fun driving time.