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.
We binge on world-class drifting, D1 at Meihan, Night drifting at Yamanashi, finishing the night off on a mountain touge. Quite possibly the most drift packed day we’ve ever experienced.
After Feed, we had a quick stop by a shop called Racing Service Factor. They race in the one-make Civic series and the Vitz cup, and both cars had won the league races not too long before we arrived.
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.
The following day, we got up early again to hit another few shops on the list. I’ve always wanted to see Carland 86. Carland is a famous shop in Kyoto that built the official replica Trueno for Initial D’s voice actor; I’m sure they made the car for the movie too.
We decided to chance Signal Auto. Signal was one of our favourite shops growing up, and after finding in disbelief that their original store is still open and operational, we added it to the list.
One of the coolest Honda shops in Japan, Zero Fighter is packed with Race and Kanjozoku spec Civics. We head to the hills stopping in Osaka JDM and Full Stage along the way before receiving a very warm welcome from the staff at Zero Fighter in Nara.
After the buzz of Car Factory Ai, We decided to chance J’s Racing. J’s is one of the largest Honda shops globally and a household name in the tuning world for years; I’m sure they see a heap of foreigners, so I didn’t expect them to be as welcoming.
Car factory Ai is one of the most excellent ae86 shops in Japan. Its owned by a woman called Ai Koizumi hence the name, and they maintain and run the newer hot version Keichi Tsuchiya N2 Levin you might have seen from time to time.
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.
After already having the craziest day ever, we were keen to meet up with our new friend we had met online over the coming months leading up to our trip. He had organized a meeting with the local up and coming Honda enthusiasts who frequent the loop in Osaka.
In this episode, we experience Kanjo Racing on the Loop in Osaka with the next generation of Loop One racers. This was one hell of an adventure!
So we are finishing our in-depth photo series on the 2019 Okayama Hachiroku festival with the race cars in the pit area and the final parade lap around the circuit in the rain. I’m skimming the words accompanying these features as I feel we have said more than enough in the videos.
The photos are for people to save and hopefully inspire or give fellow owners an idea or two; that’s why we all lurk these photos at the end of the day. It’s hard to stop a video and see all this stuff in one go. I always like taking pictures to further look at the line to appreciate this stuff at a much slower pace. And I’m trying to knock this stuff out whilst finish the video series, its the most content I’ve ever produced for Juiebox in such a short amount of time.
Some people think blogs are dead, but I do enjoy a good blog post about a particular event; it what I spent most of my time doing for the last fifteen or so years when hunting for car-related content, and I hope these articles bring a little bit of that to you.
I think we talked enough about this Truck in the videos so ill just leave the photos to speak for themselves. This was probably the most Japanese Automotive related machine I have ever seen in my life. Something that could only exist in Japan.
Moving onto part two of the “Show” area. I’m not sure what you would even call this. As most of the cars in here were just well put together streetcars. The killer about having this many good cars side by side is you tend to overlook things. Each of these would be worthy of a closer look if they were out in the wild but I felt caught for time, you wanted to try to document as much as you could but you really only have a few hours. Even as I was shooting the cars in this area of the event, people were packing up and leaving.