beautiful is that everybody today we are going to talk about my van and how I got
it and how you can get one too
everyone so today we are at a beach by gala which is in yomet on which is a
little bit of North West Okinawa and it's actually really beautiful here you
can see there's some guy out there fishing okay and not much else it's
pretty secluded it's low tide sort of stuff very cool I've moved to Okinawa
two years ago and I'm pretty much this video channel is dedicated to stuff
about Okinawa whether it be dragon boating restaurants culture
what-have-you so thank you for joining if you feel so inclined to go ahead and
hit that subscribe button that would be greatly appreciated now the reason I'm
doing this video today is because I'm getting a ton and a ton of messages
through through my email also messages on the video that I produced about my
van about the Toyota Hiace and how did I get it and there's a lot of people here
in Okinawa don't want to get a cool car but they can't find one here because
either they're too expensive or the dealers just don't carry a late-model
car that maybe you want to take back to the states later so what I've decided to
do is pretty much tell you exactly how I did it and maybe it'll work for you the
first thing you want to do is figure out why that car you want do you want a car
that's that you're gonna be able to take back to the states do you want a cool
car that you're gonna spend some time with in Japan here the US has a 25 year
import law which means basically if it's less than 25 years or older you're gonna
have to conform it to the US Highway Transportation guidelines whatever that
is I didn't really have to deal a lot about that because mine is a 1996 so
that said I was looking for a high expand and you I wanted a van I wanted a
really cool van with like you know the windows the sunrooms and everything so
what did I do the first thing I did is go on GU net.com and cüneyt calm is like
kind of the auto trader of Japan where you can see all sorts of cars what if
boats trailers trucks everything and you'll get the dealer prices from there
meaning you'll get the prices if you just walked it off the street so I was
looking and I noticed that my band for the most part anything I wanted with the
low kilometers that mine has is going to about anywhere from seven to twelve
thousand dollars I know for like a 22 to 25 year old van which was Impe was
insane to me so I contacted bunet about a band that I can't that was real
low-priced and then I realized after looking at some detailed pictures why
was low-priced because it was just junky and rowdy and they actually reached out
to me and said why don't you buy one from the mainland auction I said okay
well how do I do that first step is find the vehicle that you want to buy in your
head figure out what you want if you already know what you want then you're
ahead of the game okay then go on bunet and see what they're asking for that
particular vehicle I know it's gonna be expensive and I know the prices are
gonna be maybe out there more than you want to pay but at least you gauge what
they're going for so that you don't overpay if you decide to go the auction
route which is what I'm going to talk about now okay so the auction route let
me talk to you about how I got involved with the auction so after I reached out
to goo net a representative from King's auto emailed me so basically he gave me
a username and password for this website that gives me access to every single
auction in mainland Japan and it has drop-down menus I know everyone's like
the first question I get is was it all in Japanese did you have to figure it
all out no no it's all in English and it has drop-down menus Toyota Mitzvah
whatever you want every make and model even if it's not Japanese is on there
then you just select like you want an auto trader or some other car sights you
select the years that you're looking for the range of years how many kilometers
you want on it automatic whatever manual and then just
figure out what you need what you want and then hit enter now it changes every
week actually changes every day because there are auctions every day once you
get all the information from you know you figure out what kind of car you want
you get the information from the Kings auto people who will give you access to
that and I've put that information in the description below
then comes the tough part and you would think this is the easiest part but it's
really not it's actually kind of tough next step is give them a deposit now
you've been given about a deposit of whatever you feel necessary and I gave
them a minimal deposit and they cover the rest and obviously if you win the
auction then you have to give them the rest of the money if it went above your
deposit or not the toughest part besides the wire transfer and doing all that
paperwork is really finding the vehicle that you want so for me it took about
seven to eight months and here's why I would find some vans that I liked and
then I would you know they have an auction sheet attached to them on every
picture there's some bands of ten to eleven pictures of theirs just have
three but everyone does have an optional sheet so I started looking at the
auction sheets and I started looking and they would translate the oxygen sheets
for me the people at Kings auto and let me know what deficiencies the vehicle
had what had been done to it what's on the sheet some of the stuff I could
decipher my selves and there's plenty of sites I'll explain it to you like the
grade is easy to decipher you know the mileage is easy to easy to decipher but
once I figured out you know what I wanted I started looking and looking and
looking and I found three or four bands that I really liked and I put bids on
them and I lost bids on them because the Japanese auction works different than
United States auction and here's how that works so in the United States if
you were to buy a car at an auction you know it's five ten fifteen it doesn't
work like that in Japan in Japan you submit one bid so basically if I was to
submit two thousand dollars that would be my max and I wanted to spend and
that's the max that I was willing to bid so I would submit two thousand dollars
okay so let's say somebody else submits $1,900 I'm talking to US dollars if they
submit 1,900 then - next - mm I win the bid however if someone else submits like
twenty-five hundred dollars then I'm out and I it goes pretty quickly so you you
really know right away because the auction times page
we select you know exactly when and where the auction is and whether you
lost and here's a video to show just how fast this thing goes and what I did know
I bid on a van I had a three thousand dollar us bid in on this van and I
thought oh it's gonna go for less than that it didn't and here's how fast it
goes so you saw how fast that that auction went it was very very quick and
I lost nothing went for like $8,000 us maybe $7,500 us so that's why it took me
so long to find the van that I found is because you lose auctions you win
auctions but for me I was out out losing streak of four four vehicles and then
one night this vehicle popped up on a Friday night on the auction sheet it was
going up for auction at 10 a.m. and I said you know what I would love to bid
on this van so I called my rep through whatsapp and everything's done through
whatsapp she speaks English and she put the bid in for me and it went up at 10
a.m. at at 10:15 she told me I had won the bid so I was super excited and
that's how I got my van so that's how I got my van and it cost a fraction of
what my normal car cost here in Okinawa and I won't tell you how much because
it's it's really obscene how cheap it is now people are asking me how much do
they charge what are the fees like I think their fees were fairly reasonable
and then the shipping was probably the most expensive thing to get my van here
was about eight or nine hundred dollars u.s. because of the size I think it took
like 30 days for the van to get here and they delivered it to my door now they've
also told me they deliver to the United States so that's another thing if you
want to pursue that out that route you can do that as well these are the steps
that I took to get my van here in Okinawa and I do plan on taking it home
with me as well because it will be 25 years or older so I won't have to pass
any emissions or any crap like that it'll be a very very easy process for me
to bring that to the United eight I'm a little winded because I was
walking from down there up here and it's kind of windy and it's actually rather
steep steeper than it look so here are the steps again first go on gooo Netcom
take a look at the vehicle that you want start searching in your mind and figure
out what you exactly you want and how much they're going for on Gounod I can
almost guarantee you they will be at least half or less in half if you get
them from the auction the second step is to reach out to a colleague at I used
King's auto you might be able to use somebody else reach out to them and see
if they can give you access to the auction site which they should be able
to because their business the third step is find what the models that you want
are going for and on some of the auction sites they list the prices that they
went for that they sold for and if you're happy with that will give you a
great great guesstimate about how these cars are going whether they're going for
more money than you thought or they're going for less money than you thought
once you do that you can give them a deposit and get the ball rolling that
will give you bidding power because you can't bid unless you give them a deposit
so you'll work it out with your representative you go and you give them
a deposit and now you can start searching the internet for the auction
sites for your car or your future car and you're not going to win them all
you're not going to win the first car you like you're not going to win the
second car you like if you do congratulations
you are totally going against the grain with that but and I wish you all the
luck in the world but it didn't work like that for me third bid on the car
that you like make sure that they translate the auction sheet for you like
I said there are many sites that will translate the auction sheet for you just
a normal part it'll tell you what to look for but the actual auction sheet
that's on that car your representative should be able to translate that auction
sheet for you and give you through whatsapp or through text or however
you're communicating a pretty good list of things that are wrong with things
right with everything that auction seats says well they will be able to translate
and tell you and then you make your decision and then you can bid and ask
for shipping I shipped here to Okinawa but you can ship it from what they tell
me they ship it to the ports a Los Angeles they ship it to the East Coast
prices variants usually cheaper to ship to the west coast of the United States
just because of geography and it's a less time to get there so less expenses
but it's it's totally realistic for you to come to Japan or for you to be
sitting in the States saying I wish I had that car here in the United
States it's totally realistic to say that it's a little bit of work to get it
done but it's not impossible and I see a lot of people like you know going to
these agents and getting ripped off and charged I'm saying that they all do that
but I've seen a couple that do do that so you should really really be careful
and go with the rep you'll accompany like I said I went with Kings Auto
they've got years in the business you can go with them you don't have to and
I'll put the link at the bottom of this description so you can call them if you
want you can reach out to them if you'd like they are all on whatsapp and they
are really really great people it was totally totally seamless after I
bought the car the car was sitting in my driveway in 23 days and that's because I
missed the first boat that was on its way over here 23 days then I just did
some simple paperwork on base and boom I've got a really cool hiace van
there's the girl right there fantasy she's hanging out over there along with
all the dragonflies that are flying around or know if you can even see that
but so that's how I got my band here in Okinawa so if you're thinking about
buying a really cool car from Japan and bringing it to the States or if you are
here Okinawa on orders and you want to buy a car to bring in Okinawa be sure to
follow these simple steps and you will do fine it's not impossible you don't
have to pay these crazy dealer fees like my van if I wanted to sell it now
$12,000 are you high I'm not gonna pay that so by all means check out the
auction check out Kings Auto or someone else make sure that their fees aren't
absorbing either because I heard that somebody out there is charging a
thousand dollars just for access to the auction sites which I believe is
ridiculous ridiculous bordering on unjust ransom money
it doesn't there's another cool height ridiculous bordering on ransom money so
you know extortion almost I consider it they had very low fees and I was very
happy with their performance so I'm gonna end it here by the way if you know
anybody in military active duty or spouse came a hugger handshake is it
ain't easy and I will see you next video thanks for watching everybody talk to
you soon
you