The Last Cruise of Itaru Maru

Saturday, Thanksgiving Weekend

It’s one of the last few lovely sunny days left of this year before drearier or winter-like weather slams the door shut on this autumn. I was awake since 3:00 AM for some crazy reason, so I phased my paperwork and other chores of the day in much earlier, so I now have the liberty of the rest of this Saturday to chill and maybe nap before catching a ride for a road trip to be with family for Thanksgiving later. One of the things done today was to have Ella accompany me for a car ride to my other errand stops, as it helps to pacify her before I trick her into having a bath. Ella, loving car rides as she does, fancies this car almost as much as I do, so I couldn’t let her miss out on having the possibly the last cruise in Itaru with me. I’ll elaborate on that in a moment. I try not to be either sentimental about cars I have had, or covetous about the ones I’d like to have, but I realize that today was special in that it probably is one of the last drives, if not the last drive with my current vehicle. This is the only car that I’ve had enter my life that I’ve truly appreciated.

If there is one thing I am thankful for during this Thanksgiving season is that I can officially put an end to the hell of shopping for another vehicle. I sure as hell don’t want to be bothered with it when winter comes. As much as this one has delighted me, my needs are changing, and rather than having to contend with another round of maintenance for this one, I decided to front up for an investment into another one. Another has been found, and I’m acquiring it this weekend. The hell of car shopping, and my spiel of kicking tires yielded to me three choices: a nice little VW Golf (but with lots of kilometres racked up on it), a sweet gently used older Volvo S60 (one of the reliable ones made in the factory in Gothenburg, Sweden; not one of those inferior ones assembled in a Ford plant in America), and the one I ultimately purchased (keeping this private). It beat the other two out because of the lower mileage and price, and cheaper future maintenance costs. I got practical instead of lustful, but now not disappointed with going that route. I’ll just say that I got lucky.

I don’t often admit that I’ve given my car a proper name, but it has been christened Itaru. I don’t see why there should be any weirdness or shame in admitting that. Before we drove cars, we named the horses we rode, and ships we sailed have been somehow given more animacy through christened names for millennia. Hence, where is the wrong in giving one’s own personal vehicle a name? We go so far as accepting that the model is a distinct name (like Tiguan, Mustang, or Renegade), with the exception I suppose of the blander series numbers of some European makes (like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo*), and in that case, they sound like names for Star Wars droids. Why not go further in naming the vehicle as a distinct individual apart from its other cloned brethren manufactured models?

The practical side to giving my car a name is that it’s a convenient mnemonic device (though a cryptic one) to help me remember things like my plate number and some other VIN info and spec details. It’s a proper Japanese name assigned to a Japanese make of car. It’s a complicated story of how and why I chose the full name, Itaru Maru, for my current car; only that I noticed that many Japanese sea vessels** are christened with “<some Japanese name> Maru”, and Itaru was conveniently an authentic Japanese name that suited my other mnemonic purposes, and sounded quite lyrical along with Maru. As silly as this all might sound, in that name are 16 other mnemonically tagged pieces of information about the vehicle that I can have instant access to should there ever be an accident or incident to report for my car. Out of curiosity, I researched why many ships hailing from Japan have Maru in their name, and it still isn’t clear to me why that is so. The Japanese word Maru itself means “circular” or “round”, and another meaning of the word is for “excrement”. When referring to my car, the round pieces of shit that the word Maru may directly be describing is probably the state of my tires. With crappy malfunctioning tires, my car might as well be a drydocked boat. Just when I was ready to put it up for sale, it came to be my typical luck with tires (bike or car) that one should be irreparably flattened before that could happen. Thankfully, I found a good deal on a suitable replacement. As much as one tire has given me grief lately though, I still love the car itself, it makes me a little sad to have to part with it.

This next car I believe will be named Kikuchiyo; I’ll probably drop the Maru this time. Because again, it’s another Japanese make and model, and the name accords well with some of the specs I want to tag and process mnemonically. If you have seen the classic Akira Kurosawa movie The Seven Samurai, you may remember that Kikuchiyo (played by Toshiro Mifune) was the wild, undisciplined, impulsive and rambunctious bugger of this septet. Those qualities (I hope) won’t be seen in this next vehicle.

UPDATE: Tuesday evening, the day after Thanksgiving

Itaru Maru was sold tonight, to a guy who works as a mechanic specializing in Volvos, oddly enough. We had a great chat, and reached a deal that was mutually convenient and satisfactory for us. I am grateful that Itaru will be well cared for in the hands of somebody who will appreciate him as I did.

*- If I had bought the Volvo, I was going to name him Ingvar: the combined characteristics of the car being Swedish, and the owner being notably frugal and thrifty, like Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA. The Volvo I could have been driving away would actually have been newer than the Volvo that Kamprad, as multi-billionaire, drives for himself ( the cheap old bastard . . .). If the VW was purchased, Heinrich was going to be its name . . . long story there.

**- Including fictional spaceships, like the Kobayashi Maru, mentioned in Star Trek.