Yahsio Factory & Kazama Auto
The sleep at Daikoku was pretty rough. Looking back, I don’t think we slept at all. The roads above Daikoku never ease off. It’s a constant stream of traffic 24 hours a day, not to mention people cruising into the car park at all hours revving cars. What did we expect?
Still, it was funny to say we slept there. Originally It Daikoku intended to be a rest stop for people passing by, so it made sense at the time. We needed to get to JDM Distro before 11 am, so here we were brushing our teeth in the toilet area and hitting the road to Saitama to the Distro Japanese warehouse.
We felt like ants in the Tokyo morning commute. The amount of traffic heading to work was surreal. I guess it is the most extensive metropolitan population globally; this is what a morning commute looks like in Tokyo.
Endless traffic, but it was all moving. We didn’t experience any delays; luckily enough, as we cut through downtown traffic and made our way up to the top of Tokyo, the traffic moved like clockwork. As we said earlier, you get a feel for the size of this place when you drive the length of it and see nothing but concrete.
It took us a while to find Distro’s warehouse. Houses surrounded it in an unassuming location. We met the business owner, they pack and ship stuff around the globe, and we had a chat. I was relieved to hand over this bonnet and the magazines; I’m sure the lads were delighted to see the stuff gone, two weeks it travelled with us, and its journey was over for now.
We got a quick tour of the Distro on the other side. It was funny seeing all the stuff boxed ready to send back to Ireland, and the crates get built up before a container is loaded. A container had just left for Ireland, so the stock of stuff was relatively small. Either way, I’ve always wanted to see the other side of the place I work, so it was an excellent part of the trip.
With the hood and magazines dropped off, we decided to check out Yashio Factory, which wasn’t too far from the warehouse.
So much S15 stuff to take in!
This was funny.
As much as I love the pink colour, this simple silver example hit the spot.
Another shot of the car, but from a lower angle, man this thing was a beauty.
An endless sea of chassis, cool to see every generation with the SR here.
Out on the street these two cars would stop you dead in your tracks.
And this was the view down the laneway.
Its hard to describe in photos, just how good these cars looked on the side of the street. That colour is glowing.
We’ve been huge fans of Yashio factory for many years, it was so nice to finally see these cars in the flesh.
The kit and the livery combo are perfect. Unfortunately Okachan wasn’t there that day so we kept moving out of Tokyo.
We set our sights on Tsukuba as we worked our way up to Fukushima. The plan was to meet some of the lads from Crazy Street Style. On the way, we stopped into Kazama Auto, where power vehicles used to be.
How cool is this?
Awesome rear ends.
Kazama’s s15 Varietta with a kit, you don’t see too many of these built this way.
This should have been the new Supra.
What an insane-looking car.
Kazama showing us the truck around the back and his other cars for Formula D Japan.
As a teen, 90% of the cool cars that came to Ireland came out through their yard at the back. I wanted to see the doors where Andy from Power vehicles photographed many vehicles before landing in Ireland. These doors were quite famous to many, an Irish enthusiast.
Kazama was super friendly to us. He gave us a tour of their workshop and showed us his truck around the back of the power vehicles yard. It was funny to finally stand where I spent an embarrassing amount of hours looking at cool cars online as a youth.
That kit adds to the already aggressive lines of the 15, these two examples were sitting pretty out the front.
Look how aggressive this thing is, I’m not usually a fan of such a wild kit without a livery but id happily own this.
We said our goodbyes and kept going for Tsukuba.