One phenomenon I noticed immediately here in Japan was the predominance of tiny cars and trucks on the road. I expected small, but the mini-car exists here in numbers I hadn’t seen during my last stay eight years ago.

My friend Hironori said the trend started during the past five years and isn’t necessarily a response to gas prices, which have always been two or three times that in America. No, the mini-car’s popularity is simply a response to Japan’s lingering economic slowdown.

Japan has only recently begun to recover from its real estate bubble of the late ’80s, when prices skyrocketed to heights even Americans — no longer strangers to real estate bubbles — have never endured. The resulting crash had a comparable effect on Japanese banks that our own banks are now experiencing. Japanese banks also had to deal with a rash of unpaid loans and foreclosures through bank failures, government bailouts, and vast restructurings.

As for the mini-cars, they’ve been around for a long time, though not nearly in the numbers I’m seeing today. Using regulations that date to the immediate post-World War II period, mini-cars and motorcycles enjoy vast discounts on licensing fees and insurance costs.

Now, in the face of continuing economic woes, the Japanese have embraced these inexpensive vehicles known traditionally as Kei cars, short for keijidosha, literally “light automobile.” Kei cars sport yellow license plates, feature extremely narrow frames and adhere to the 660 cc displacement engine-size regulation.

Kei cars have delightful names, such as the Mitsubishi Town Bee, Mazda Friendee, Nissan Vanette, Honda Zest, Suzuki MightyBoy, and Daihatsu Move Latte. Toyota  doesn’t make a Kei car because it owns Daihatsu, an early Kei-car leader. Honda does make them, but has been pushed to fourth in domestic market share by Kei-car king, Suzuki.

Kei trucks also buzz around Japanese cities, with models like the Honda Acty and the Suzuki Carry.

Of course Japanese commuters and local small businesses help these vehicles thrive, especially as Japan’s fuel prices soar to nearly eight bucks a gallon.

As an interesting aside, Japanese transport trucks are unified affairs — semi tractor-trailers are nowhere to be seen — and are half to a third the size of their American cousins, making the roads safer and more tolerable.

Could these Kei cars and trucks catch on in America? Shamefully, I tend to doubt it. They’d be in danger of being squashed like a bug on the highway by our ridiculously overgrown trucks, and in any event Americans may have grown addicted to their comfort machines, though the permanent demise of the larger SUVs and pickup trucks would be as unsurprising as it would be welcome.

This is not to say the Japanese don’t also have large models out on the roads. Lexis, Infiniti, Mercedes and Camry equivalents are not in short supply, though they do not dominate the roads. You’ll even spot the occasionally small SUV, but these are little more than sport station wagons.

One surprise is the apparent rarity of the Toyota Prius. I’ve spotted only two during my first week here.

I do hope these Kei cars are marketed in the U.S., but I won’t be holding my breath. If you want to take a look at them for yourselves, search for any of the models in Wikipedia. They’re well documented there.

Ross can be reached at napanet.net. His Web page is napanet.net/—calross/