Nippon Oil Filter

[IllusionX]

Well, a little bit of story first...

my friend bought this 98 Corolla VE 2 months ago. It was a very sweet deal... 2500$ with only 48000km. The body is not in that great shape.. it's bumped, dinged here and there. Anyways... with just 48k km~ Ok, i suspect if it's real or not...
Since we were changing the oil.. i took time to check all the oil level... the air filter and such. It had a denso air filter, brake oil was new, automatic transmission was still red. It also runs like a 48k km car.. It doesn't take any oil either... so i guess it was a good buy ??


alright.... back to topic. The first surprise is that the previous person who did the oil change tighten the freaking drain bolt to hell.. it felt like he did it with an impact gun!! Once taken out, the washer was completely compressed. So finally come the oil filter... From the top of the engine, i thought it was an original oil filter, as i don't know many aftermarket filters that make them in black with white writings....

it had japanese written on it.. so checked it out... NIPPON FILTER?!??! wtf? Is it the same filter as the original Japanese made Denso filter?? This is exactly the same size filter that fits our yaris....