My adventure for the Delica starts tomorrow morning

Sorry I missed the chance to meet one of the board members. Very happy to hear you made it across the border with no insurmountable hassles.

Mazdax605 wrote: Through customs and stopped on interstate 90 for fuel and food. Eight plus hours ahead.

Woohoo! Made it past the hard part.

Success!

whoop WHOOP

Back in Massachusetts crashing at my codrivers house on the north shore. Delica performed excellent the whole way. Updates tomorrow hopefully including pics.

Home from my friends house in northern MA. The Delica is in my driveway!!What a long couple of days. I will update with pics, and stories later tonight or in the coming days. My friend took tons of pics, me not so much. You will have a good idea of the trip though once I am done telling my tale. Epic road trip!!

I just wanted to let you know: Good luck, we're all counting on you.

Congrats, dude! I will have to drop by and have a look at the wee beastie someday!

Glad you made it! Feel free to swing by next time you take it to the Village Market.

SilverFleet wrote: Glad you made it! Feel free to swing by next time you take it to the Village Market.

Don't you worry Tony I will stop by the next time I am in the area.

Have to get it registered now! That may be the toughest part with the peoples republic of Massachusetts.

Welcome Home Chris, now you can breathe! Plates, you don't need no stinkin' plates.

Hey guys,

I just wanted to give you some of the story of this adventure. It began for me months ago,but really got serious on Sunday night.

We headed out as a family on a camping trip in the white mountains of New Hampshire on Saturday morning. Three hours driving later, and an hour or so of setup,and we were camping. Kids did some swimming,and begged to do the mining sluice at the camp site. We decided that Sunday would be better. Got up fairly late on Sunday, and let the kids do the mining sluice,and later drove with my inlaws to a local flea market. After we returned it was around 3 pm and I had a 3 hour drive back home,and an early bedtime for the flight to Toronto on Monday morning.

My sister was tasked with driving me to Logan airport in Boston around 3:30am, and decided it would be best to sleep over my house. Too bed a bit later than I wanted,and with my mind racing with scenarios of the next two days mixed with my wife not being in bed with me didn't lead to the most restful night of sleep.

Got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and waited for my friend Brad to meet me there. He was about 30 minutes behind me. Thankfully he knew how to use the electronic kiosk for our tickets,and we made our way towards security. The line was large,but moved quickly. We made sure to pack light,and dress in easy to remove shoes.

Our trip had a stop off in New York at JFK where we had to wait about 1.5 hrs. While we were there we were given customs manifest I believe where we had to claim if we had any cash larger than a certain amount,and gifts,etc.. We didn't Have any thing to declare,and filling out the form went easy. We boarded the flight bound for Toronto,and the trip then got really serious to me as we were leaving the country.

We arrived in Toronto in about 1.5 hrs, and all was well aside from the plane being small,and the flight attendant telling us it was 2 hrs earlier than it really was. She must have thought Toronto was in the mountain time zone. We had arrived in YYZ, but I never heard any Rush playing once we entered the airport. I was disappointed!

My importer Craig was waiting at the drop off/pick up area in a honda RHD minivan that was really cool. He zipped around the metro Toronto traffic with such ease,but I was scared being in what should have been the drivers seats with zero control! Turns out he headed the wrong way on the highway and we had to go another route. It was about two hours to his place in London Ontario.

Shortly after arrival at his place I logged into his computer to check my gmail in case my customs broker had emailed me the important paperwork needed for the import. It wasn't there,and I was sad but not surprised. We then decide to kill time by driving to his warehouse in rural Glencoe,Ontario. He had so many cool JDM cars and trucks there that I had seen last month,but Brad hadn't. He had a huge grin on his face,and got loads of pics.

Ths is getting really long, so I will continue it in a little while. Trust me it gets better.

Proof the van is in my driveway:

looking forward to the story continued. and more pics of the van of course.

So when do we get the reat?

So now that I am back home, and have some time I will try to give you more of the story.

After checking out the cool stash of vehicles that Craig had at his warehouse, we ventured back towards London where he lives. On the way he asked me to drop him off at his parents house where he had his Suzuki Carry kei truck. He picked it up, and we followed him across town back to his place.

Brad and I then hung around Craig's place waiting for an email from my customs broker. I also called them even at the late east coast hour because the customs broker is in the Seattle/Vancouver area and three hours behind us. No luck with the bond that we were waiting on. Craig's awesome wife made us an awesome dinner, and even dessert! Amazing the way were treated! Craig's 5 year old son took a liking to me, and we traded different video game stories, and such. This was all a big surprise to Craig and his wife as they are home schooling him, and don't have any video games. I guess he played some at a friends place!

Now it was obvious that the bond wouldn't be posted at this point, so Craig let me use his iPad, and look up hotels in the area. He said we could have stayed with them had they not just changed their spare bedroom to a play room for the boys. Did I mention they were awesome hosts!? We found a Holiday Inn express a few miles away, and Craig gave it his seal of approval. Mind you this was a national holiday in Canada as well so the whole country was on a holiday schedule. We loaded up, and headed to the hotel. On our way we noticed a nice white Delica a block or so ahead of us, but due to the traffic lights we were never able to catch him.

Okay now have I mentioned that people in Canada are super friendly! So friendly in fact that while checking in to teh hotel a couple of ladies behind us noticed Brad's Japanese Classic car show t-shirt, and mentioned their parents owned the first ever Toyota(Toyopet they confirmed) in Canada. We got to chatting about it, and our mission to import the Delica, and they offered if we got stuck that we could stay with them. Amazing right!?

The night in the hotel was nothing spectacular aside from Brad finding a channel on the TV that was showing a marathon of a show about the Canadian border patrol, and customs agents. I forget the name of the show, but it showed the airport in Toronto where we flew in to, and also did a bunch of segments on the customs declaration form that we filled out. Now this never really dawned on me, but I had a check for the remaining balance for the parts, and service Craig provided on the van. I never declared this, and luckily I made it through the customs check point where we turned it in without them checking our bags where they would have found it. I was so dumb to not declare that, and really it was just a mistake. The other part of the show made me even more worried than I already was because it showed the border patrol turning people away for any number of reasons. The least of which was a couple of Americans buying a strange RHD Japanese van. Have I mentioned I am very nervous anyway? I didn't sleep much that night.

Good job. Glad to see more people getting these awesome Japan market cars here.

Let us know how registration goes.

That van is probably going to be one of the weirdest things people in your neighborhood will see on the road lol. Bring it to a Cars and Coffee, people will love it.

Congrats dude, hope to see some more pictures!

My first time back on the forum in two months and this is at the top of the page. Awesome.

Spent the better part of the day washing, clay baring, and waxing the van. Only got half of it waxed before running out of time. I also removed the side entry step, and sanded it down before adding a fresh coat of trim black paint. Look heaps better now. It dawned on me that the last time anyone washed and waxed this van was when it was in Japan a few months ago if not longer. It was pretty cool to think of that fact, and I wondered what sort of owner the van had before me. Someone had to have loved this van for it to survive this long in this sort of shape.

I found a sticker on the rear of the van that says My Car Nakajima, and also receipts from the same place in the pocket of the drivers seat. I am guessing it is either a repair/maint shop or the original dealer. Of course it is in Japanese so I can't read it. I looked up the place and it is in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, so I am guessing the van is from that region. I believe the van was at an auction in Tokyo, but I don't remember for sure.

I will finish the story of the trip or try to later when my kids go to bed. I also got a few more pics today. I will try to post them up later as well.

Chris

Re: your declaration form.

You only have to declare cash. The cheque is not cash, so you didn't do anything wrong.

Phew, I thought I screwed up big time! I was even worried about posting that on the Web.

Looked up that company name, found this: MY CAR NAKAJIMA, Y.K. Company Profile

Hobby, toy, and game shops, nsk http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/company-profile.MY_CAR_NAKAJIMA_YK.ea319bd75df5bab1.html

Looks like a hobby store, previous owner might of been into RC cars or something.

If you declare that you're not wearing underwear they pull you aside to check.

Mazdax605 wrote: I found a sticker on the rear of the van that says My Car Nakajima, and also receipts from the same place in the pocket of the drivers seat. I am guessing it is either a repair/maint shop or the original dealer. Of course it is in Japanese so I can't read it. I looked up the place and it is in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, so I am guessing the van is from that region. I believe the van was at an auction in Tokyo, but I don't remember for sure.

I am learning Japanese right now. I can't translate all of the paperwork myself (I have a decent handle on hiragana and katakana, but not kanji. Yes, folks, Japan has three alphabets!), but if you make me a copy I can use it as a project and maybe have some of my Japanese friends help.