We arrived at Le Mans yesterday night after a boring long flight from Tokyo. It took more than 12 hours from Tokyo to Brussel where we spent an hour for trasit. We needed one more hours of flight from Brussel to Paris and nearly three hours of bus ride to Le Mans. I got up 4:40am in Tokyo and arrived at Le Mans at 11pm on the same day. Remember that there is seven hours time difference between France and Japan. What a looong day!
What really surprised us was that sun has not set even after 10pm. This was really a surprise for the peolple from the country which does not implement summer time and which is located further down south. Even after 8pm, it seemd to me that it's still around 4pm.
Of course, we wanted to fall into sleep as soon as we arrived at the hotel. However, when one of our crew (he wanted to be anonymous :-) put a power strip which he bought in the United States into the power outlet, half rooms on the floor turned into complete dark! It seemed that a fuse was cut by an acccidental shortage occurd inside of the power strip. Eventually we found out that a capacitor in the power strip couldn't handle 240V and was exploded!
Today, there was a Scrutineering and Administrative Control held at Place des Jacobins (Jacobins Square). Each car has arrived there at prescheduled time. This year's entrant includes McLAREN BMW F1, PORCHE 911, FERRARI F40, HONDA NSX, TOYOTA SUPRA, and NISSAN GT-R. When we arrived at Jacobins NSX had finished taking scrutineering check and they were going to take a picture. NISSAN GT-R has appeared at Fuji GT-Championship Race (Referenced server written only in Japanese, proceed with caution!) in Japan held on March 4th. Because NISSAN is selling this car only in Japan, the car caught many people's eye.
(I might add something to this report. Try reloading or accessing later again!)
Shigeki Matsushima
Le Mans, La Sarthe, France
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