Everything Old is New Again

One person's trash is another one's treasure, right? Well, in our case it was. On Okinawa, there are many, many junkyards. I'm not sure if this is just an Okinawan thing or if there have always been a lot of junkyards around in California and Chicago as well. Maybe I've just never looked for them before? Or maybe its because we live on an island now, and they're just very concentrated here. In fact, its very common for people to look to these junkyards for parts for their cars and trucks, and it's also very common for Americans to use these yards to junk their cars when their tour is done and it's their time to leave the island. I'm telling you - there's at least 6 right in the area of the island we live in. This means that when we are looking for something for our (Matt's) truck, we get to drive around to each one until we find what we're looking for... fun, right? Well, I'm going to be honest - it really isn't much fun for me at all since I'm not a car-enthusiast of any type, but this day we (I) happened to actually spot a great find!

We made our way down some classic Okinawan back roads until we came upon Miyagi Junkyard... maybe that wasn't the real name, but they all seem to have names similar to that. As we found the Pajero "section" (ie. two old Pajeros), I noticed something that Matt has been wanting for pretty much as long as we've had the truck - one of those ladders that go on the back so you can climb up and use the roof-rack easier. It was attached to a decomposing Pajero with no wheels, but it was actually in pretty great shape!

Matt installing the ladder onto our Pajero

Testing it out

Thrilled with our find, we then tried to haggle with the owners of the junkyard (who spoke no English of course). They apparently wanted Y3000 for it (about $34) which wasn't happening - mainly, because we didn't have that much yen on us. I'm still not sure what we ended up paying for it, but we just gave them whatever yen and dollars we could scrounge up out of my purse and Matt's car seats. After 20 minutes of haggling, removing it and reattaching to our Pajero, we now are the proud owners of a new-ish ladder!

Finished product

Thanks for following!

-C