Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Dump Trucks

There are a couple of really Japanese-y things that I have failed to write about yet on my blog, so with just over 5 weeks remaining, I'm making the mad dash to make my blog complete.  Here goes with post one of the long overdue...

Dump trucks.  Big, ugly, dirty and not usually anything you take much notice of, right?  Ahh, but you're thinking of American dump trucks.  Here in Japan it's a whole different story.

Here they're big (probably the biggest things on the road), beautiful, colorful, clean and full of bling.  No.  I'm serious.  They're blingy.

My theory is that Japanese dump truck drivers have lots of personality because it comes through in their trucks.  These are not red-necked boys who failed out of semi-truck driving school, but guys who shout "Look at me!"  Why do I say this?  Because they have the biggest, badest, blingy-est (if that's a word) decorations on their trucks.  Dump trucks here are a piece of art.

My favorite are the side, wingy-thingies that protrude from the sides of the windshields.  Silver, shiny and detailed is the only way to describe them.  They look like they belong in a Mexican cathedral rather than on a dump truck.






Among the decorations are fancy taillights, fancy wheels, and of course fancy seat covers.  There are also the windshield wiper blades that are edgy silver things and look like some wicked medieval weapon going across the windshields on rainy days.



But my all time favorite are the ones with the art work on the large protruding metal sheet that rises from the roof of the cab or along the side.


I run into the "Kamikaze Cats" truck all the time and it always makes me smile.



And then there are the tricked out mini dump trucks that just must have "little man syndrome".  They've got to compensate somehow so they get super decorated.



Words simply cannot describe the dump trucks here.  Perhaps it is best left to Tim Allen when he said "Arhh, arhh, arhh!"

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