Off we went, out of Nagoya armed with google maps aimed at Fukushima. For those who don’t know, Ebisu is up in the mountains about 30 minutes away from Fukushima city, which itself is situated about 30 minutes from the coast where the Nuclear reactor is located.
We managed to get our first sizable amount of sleep since landing in Japan as I was pretty eager to get up early and hit a few shops in the surrounding area before we made our way up to Ebisu. A little digging around led us a strip which has some of our all time favorite shops. The main ones we wanted to visit in Nagoya were Kids heart and Garage defend, the guys from MCR factory were away so that was out…
It has been exactly one year today since I returned from Canada. Before I left, the car scene was in the bin, quite literally. Everyone around me was packing up and heading off all over the world to escape the gloom. The country was a shattered and although things aren’t back to 100% the entire country as a whole is in a much better shape than when many of us left.
After a day of car hunting, we had to make our way back down to Himeji. We would be pimping out the van with some ordered parts in Up garage the following day.
So for the people who have been following our trip to Japan so far, quite a lot of this will be car related (as you may have guessed). This holiday was planned out as a car holiday, so it’s going to be an automotive heavy story throughout.
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.
We are generally not one for throwbacks on Juicebox but I decided to dig deep. Deep in the archives and go way back to a time before Juicebox, back to pre-recession times when the country was awash with Japanese road cars.
The roads are empty; the average folk are sound asleep. Between the valleys of a Celtic tiger vision, the grumbling sound of a 1jz resonates against the dew-covered embankments.
It was pretty funny bumping into some of your idols unexpectedly. Kumakubo and Suenaga were lurking around the paddock, trying to have a broken English conversation with them was a good time.
It was April 8th 2014; I had completely misplaced myself in a foreign land, which I was going to call home for the foreseeable future. I had always wanted to make my way down to a round of Formula D and after a few talks it was actually happening.
So its been enjoyable recapping when I get the chance, putting together these side stories on where I have been at since I departed Ireland over two years ago. For many longtime readers of the ramblings on here, you are aware that one part of Juicebox (Neil) is living in Canada and sort of taking a break from things. In the last one of these posts I was living in Edmonton, so about this time last year I made my way over to Vancouver, I couldn’t hack the snow. I decided to take the train back across Canada, something I would highly recommend to anyone, the scenery is almost too much to process.
David picked up this car from a friend a little over a year ago. Prior to that he has never owned an AE86, but it was high on the list of cars he had to own, and simply put, hard work made that become a reality. It’s taken a very short period of time for David to shape this car to suit his personality, however I can tell you that this car is far from finished, in fact as I write this I know he is planning a change again in the near future.
It’s pretty incredible how much the world of drifting has grown in the last ten years or so. And not just in our little country but throughout the entire world. Drift events are now attracting larger audiences whether it’s the people sitting trackside or the folks lounging at home watching some sort of livestream with way too many advertisements thrown in every twenty seconds. To keep up with pace of the ever expanding drift culture, how do you go about creating a splash in this overflowing pond?
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Edmonton has a pretty big Drag racing and muscle car scene also, as it naturally would being an oil driven city, We made it out to the race track a few times. The toys that came out to these events were amazing.
