Hachiroku Heaven! We head to AE86 Festival In Okayama. Japan’s largest annual gathering of Levin and Trueno’s celebrating the AE86 & AE85 chassis. From N2 race cars to Initial D machines, this is arguably the greatest 86 gathering on earth.
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
The next day, we were flung straight into the deep end. We hit up an Autobacs, which was just down the street from our hotel room, for a quick look; the car park at any Auto parts shop always has a few gems. Our aircon was broken, which resulted in an incredibly humid night’s sleep, but that didn’t dampen our spirits.
So we were keen to get back to Japan. Our first taste of it was a plan that fell apart back in 2016. We wanted to get back out there and give ourselves plenty of time to try and do whatever we could. We had a very loose plan, go to 86 fest in Okayama on the third day, meet some Honda guys, collect some 86 parts and catch up with the CSS crew; we would make the rest up as we go along.
In 2019 we went back to Japan. Hungry for more after “Japan Without a Plan”, we aimed to seek out AE86’s, Street drifting, Kanjo culture, tuning shops and much more.
In this eleven-part special, we buy another van and travel up the east coast, documenting as much as we could, getting ourselves into some hilarious situations.
Enjoy our journey through Japanese car culture over the next few weeks. This one has been a long time coming.
So there it was, a lifelong dream holiday done and dusted. For our last night in Tokyo and we decided to make our way down to the Sega Joyopolis to check out the Initial D game, afterward, we grabbed a few beers and hit the beach to reflect on the madness we had witnessed over the last two weeks.
After what would only be an unforgettable night at Daikoku, we rolled the dice and chanced our luck. It was late, we had been kicked out of Daikoku and there was one place left on the list I wanted to tick off before we went home.
So as I stated in the first post, this was a considerably good night at Daikoku and felt like a split feature was worth the effort.
The wait was over, after a failed attempt to get into Daikoku on the previous night, we were adamant to make it here for a Saturday night no matter what. We hung around in the Up Garages close by and made our way towards Daikoku around 9 PM to get an early spot.
So after a trip to Tec Arts, the day was still pretty young. We decided to head towards Spoon sports, that area of Tokyo had a hub of various tuning shops, or so we were told. We set the sat Nav once again and hoped for the best.
After a night of madness on the docks, we woke to a familiar Irish sight, a soggy grey morning. Regardless of the weather, there was a shop that had been on the hit list for a very long time and I was incredibly eager to check it out before our trip came to an end. Tec Arts has been around for a long time and is a very familiar name in the 86 world. They primarily deal with AE86’s these days but are known to have built some very cool cars over the years.
Tokyo would be our final destination on the road trip, I was a little sad knowing this once in a lifetime adventure was coming to an end, lucky for us we were staying in Tokyo for three nights and had the Van which would give us the freedom to explore the surrounding area. Butterflies grew as we edged closer to the beast.
During our trip to Japan, we ventured as many Up Garages as we came across. There was always one close to tuning shops and just after some food and a visit to Top Secret we spotted a relativly big one on the same street. Each one is completely different so its really a lucky dip, some are heavily packed with absolute gold whilst others were a little tamer, regardless there was always something of interest in each one of them.
After our visit to RWB we pushed on further into the outskirts of Tokyo. One shop which was not too far from RWB is called G Corporation, another on the must-see list for a long time, we had to go. I’ve always been a huge fan of their S-Chassis kits and outlandish paint work.
Like I’ve discussed in previous posts, there is so much automotive content to take in when visiting Japan. On our journey, we spotted so many interesting car sales or car related businesses on the side of the road. If we tried to pull into all of them we would have gotten nowhere.