We had come up with an ambitious plan, hit D1 early in the morning and then drive five hours to Sports land Yamanashi and potentially meet up with Alexi from Noriyaro and our mate Andrew from Ireland. We heard about a night drift event at Yamanashi and were told not to miss it.
We got up bright and early the following day after a surprising sleep in a capsule hotel and decided to head out of Osaka and head for the hills. Our fits stop was Osaka JDM, a shop that has seen extreme popularity in the last few years with the popularity of the Kanjo culture.
If you are over thirty, you’ll be well aware of Trial for their epic demo cars and long history with tuning. They have one of the largest shops in Japan and have been around for over thirty years. I was first acquainted with them in Max Power in both the magazine and their DVD Japan feature back in the day called “beast from the east”. Max Power was the most prominent UK tuning magazine in the early Millenium.
We visit tuning shops like J’s Racing, Feed, Tra-Kyoto, Signal Auto, Car Factory AI and more. Join us as we binge on our favourite tuning shops in Osaka and Kyoto. This episode is 45 minutes of Japanese eye candy.
We were redoing our very first trip all over again, but no one was complaining. We had to check out Global Auto before it closed, arguably the most incredible line up of Japanese dream cars globally; the view at this place is entirely surreal, like something out of a video game. Continue Reading
We found it hard to sleep the first night. The anticipation was a little overwhelming. I haven’t had that many situations as I grew old where I had butterflies like being a kid, excited about the unknown of what you may encounter the next day, imagination was running wild.
Where to begin with this one? Without going too turbo on the intro to this experience I’ll give a brief introduction and a back story as to how this adventure came about.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been into cars, primarily Japanese cars. With the site, I’ve always tried to showcase a little slice of everything and grew up in a family full of Ford and Volkswagen heads. Let’s just say my pier family members weren’t so keen on my growing love for the Japanese car. Gran Turismo really didn’t help either.
The more I dug the more gold I found, it started with the Supra, then the AE86, and from there the hunt to find out more about this fascinating car culture led me on a long road to build a website, meet people around the world who share a similar passion, and spend countless hours shooting photos and talking about the stuff.
There’s just something so awesome about this company. Imperial craft based out of Minoo City in the Osaka prefecture build and tune some incredible Mini’s. I stumbled across their blog in Minkara and was amazed at some stuff that has come out of their workshop. The cars have been given the Japanese touch and by the looks of some of the pictures its a match made in heaven.
