Takashi Hirano and a friend were walking around a Kyiv suburb in Ukraine's capital at the end of July when his friend pointed out a white hatchback parked near a bush. 

"Isn't that a Japanese car?" his friend asked.

The worn Mazda Familia DX itself was nothing special—Japanese cars are very popular in Ukraine and pop up in Kyiv where Hirano lives.  

What stood out among the dull patches and spots of rust were four prominent kanji characters spelling out "Daiichi Chinmi" across the back of the car. 

Hirano snapped some photos, guessing it was a logo of some sort, and posted them on X, formerly Twitter, the next day. The post simply read, "I saw a Mazda car" over two photos of the car from the front and back.

Then, something unexpected happened.

The company the logo belongs to not only saw the post, its president recognized the hatchback.

"Somehow, our company sales car from about 30 years ago is in Ukraine," the Osaka business posted. Daiichi Chinmi has been around for 65 years selling frozen dishes and hors d'oeurvres. 

With one mystery solved, another followed in the immediate uproar at Daiichi Chinmi. "Why is it in Ukraine?" the employees wondered.

Miho Nishino, 48, the fourth-generation president of the company, said she immediately recognized the car as one of the company's own.

Shinji Narasaki, 64, the company chairman, dropped a nostalgia bomb of a theory based on the model of the car.

“I think it might be the one I drove for my sales job when I first joined the company,” Narasaki said. 

He and others thought it was possible that a Daiichi Chinmi sales car used around 30 to 40 years ago may have been scrapped after the company returned it at the end of its lease. 

The company and Hirano learned from people in Ukraine about the possible route the car traveled to end up in the country. 

The information included things such as the fact that the car’s license plate number “BH” is from Odesa, a port city in the south of Ukraine, and that used Japanese cars used to be imported by ship to the port of Odesa. 

"It must be exciting to see a 30-year-old car still being driven in another country" read one response to Daiichi Chinmi's post that received more than 30,000 likes and an abundance of commentary. 

"I hope the car survives the shellacking," another read.  

Hirano made another post summarizing the series of responses and translating them into Ukrainian, receiving comments of its own, such as, “A company that existed 30 years ago still exists!”

It was also 30 years ago when Ukraine gained its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

On X, some were ruminating about the three decades of turbulence.

A website called “withnews,” which is affiliated with The Asahi Shimbun, published an article about the Mazda.

 A Ukrainian who read the article via automatic translation and other means made a comment, “This is a very interesting example of the combination of Ukraine and Japan, past and present, and war and peace.”

Hirano, 43, is another force connecting the two countries; he studied the Ukrainian language and politics at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and received a master’s degree from the National University in Lviv, western Ukraine.

Currently, Hirano works as an editor of the Japanese-language edition of the Ukrainian National News Agency "Ukrinform." 

He reports on the ravages of war, such as air raid warnings, in his own daily X posts. But he also captures “everyday life,” such as the rundown car with a kanji logo.

Hirano does this in his downtime because he “wants to convey the ‘war as it really is.’” 

More than 40 suicide drones flew over the city one night, he recalled. After the air raid warning was lifted the following morning, Hirano said he strolled through a suburb and bought a kilogram of bright red tomatoes at a market.

Even during this momentary respite, he cannot stop thinking about his friends on the front lines and his fear of bombing.

“This is what it means that war and everyday life exist at the same time,” he said.

There are two popular shops that serve onigiri rice balls in Kyiv, Hirano said.

He recalled the glamorous Japanese New Year’s “osechi” dishes he had seen on Daiichi Chinmi’s website and said, “I hope to serve such Japanese food to people in Ukraine someday.”