Before we begin, I'd just like to note that this is going to be a very very long thread with a lot of photos both from my cell phone and my Nikon D5600. I'll denote in the last post when I'm out of things to share. I'll have links to full albums within the post as well.
A few of you already heard about this trip and I stated that I'd post one big thread when I got back. I've been a little behind but I finally feel up to sitting down and writing this all out.
Back in Dec of 2017, after a usual night of shit posting on the internet and browsing zuccbook, I had a pretty stupid idea. I figured at this point in my life, I'm not getting any younger and I haven't really done anything crazy or spontaneous (I call this my quarter life crisis, which is partly why I own the mustang).
I grew up during the days of Gran Turismo, played a ton of 1-4 as a kid and I remember racing anything from AE86's to Skyline's to Evo's. Even though I grew up with V8's and fell into European cars, the real JDM cars were always something I wanted to explore at some point.
Stories about the Mid Night Club, Wangan racers, 90/00's tuners like Top Secret, all of these swirled in my mind about what Japanese car culture was. Lets not forget the incredible driving roads, anything from the expressways around Tokyo and Yokohama to the touge's in various prefectures like Gunma, Saitama and Kanagawa.
What really pushed me over the edge was following the photography of one man's driving adventures in this scenic country. I'm sure many of the old timers around here will remember our resident Japanese member @u1cobra, I've enjoyed his pictures since I was in high school and after finding him on facebook and seeing all of his live updates with pictures and touge runs, I said screw it....
I'm going to Japan.
So I roped two friends into this idea and we started to plan. I figured November would be the best time due to cooler weather and less tourism. The trip was planned for Nov 1 - 12th. We would rent a cool car we couldn't get in the US and go explore Japanese car culture and see the country.
Time passed by, eventually the big day arrived. We flew from Philadelphia to San Francisco which was about 6 hours. We then flew from San Francisco to Haneda International in Tokyo which was about 12 hours. I'm so glad I got Economy Plus with the extended legroom.
After missing our first bus to the hotel, we finally made it to our destination. Odaiba, a man made island in the Tokyo Bay. We were staying at the Hotel Trusty Tokyo Bayside in Ariake. I booked this on a Singaporean travel website and saved $70 per night versus using hotels.com. It was the best mix between price and actually being a nice place. (The Hilton down the road was about 300 a night, I paid 80).
Walking to the hotel after getting off the bus. Our hotel was at the base of the left tower.
We had mostly been awake since the 31st of oct, it was now the 2nd of Nov. After checking in, my one friend (who shall now be referred to as @Ezbok58a for simplicity sake) went to sleep so my other friend and I went out to get food.
We found a small food court down the street and this place called Mos Burger. Let me tell you, I wish this place existed in the US. They had a burger with like an onion chutney sauce on it which was great. They also serve REAL Coke here of course, none of that High Fructose Corn Syrup crap we get in the US.
At this point we were feeling confident. We made it out of the airport, to the hotel, and even found food. Japan was ours for the taking at this point.
For the rest of the night we roamed the island.
Our island had a great view of Rainbow Bridge. This was often a finishing point for people racing on the expressways back in the 80's and 90's.
Normie shot in front of Rainbow Bridge
Odaiba also has it's own giant Gundam
We came across what looked like a local drift event while we were on the bus. We walked the island and found it. Turns out it was a D1GP event which is pretty big in Japan.
The next day we were staying on the island. We decided to check out the D1GP event. Getting in was free, but paid tickets were required to watch the drifting event and we missed out on getting those sadly. We still got to see a lot of cool stuff and saw some drift action on the big TV and through the stands.
D1GP Full Album Here
-cont in next post-
A few of you already heard about this trip and I stated that I'd post one big thread when I got back. I've been a little behind but I finally feel up to sitting down and writing this all out.
Back in Dec of 2017, after a usual night of shit posting on the internet and browsing zuccbook, I had a pretty stupid idea. I figured at this point in my life, I'm not getting any younger and I haven't really done anything crazy or spontaneous (I call this my quarter life crisis, which is partly why I own the mustang).
I grew up during the days of Gran Turismo, played a ton of 1-4 as a kid and I remember racing anything from AE86's to Skyline's to Evo's. Even though I grew up with V8's and fell into European cars, the real JDM cars were always something I wanted to explore at some point.
Stories about the Mid Night Club, Wangan racers, 90/00's tuners like Top Secret, all of these swirled in my mind about what Japanese car culture was. Lets not forget the incredible driving roads, anything from the expressways around Tokyo and Yokohama to the touge's in various prefectures like Gunma, Saitama and Kanagawa.
What really pushed me over the edge was following the photography of one man's driving adventures in this scenic country. I'm sure many of the old timers around here will remember our resident Japanese member @u1cobra, I've enjoyed his pictures since I was in high school and after finding him on facebook and seeing all of his live updates with pictures and touge runs, I said screw it....
I'm going to Japan.
So I roped two friends into this idea and we started to plan. I figured November would be the best time due to cooler weather and less tourism. The trip was planned for Nov 1 - 12th. We would rent a cool car we couldn't get in the US and go explore Japanese car culture and see the country.
Time passed by, eventually the big day arrived. We flew from Philadelphia to San Francisco which was about 6 hours. We then flew from San Francisco to Haneda International in Tokyo which was about 12 hours. I'm so glad I got Economy Plus with the extended legroom.
After missing our first bus to the hotel, we finally made it to our destination. Odaiba, a man made island in the Tokyo Bay. We were staying at the Hotel Trusty Tokyo Bayside in Ariake. I booked this on a Singaporean travel website and saved $70 per night versus using hotels.com. It was the best mix between price and actually being a nice place. (The Hilton down the road was about 300 a night, I paid 80).
Walking to the hotel after getting off the bus. Our hotel was at the base of the left tower.
We had mostly been awake since the 31st of oct, it was now the 2nd of Nov. After checking in, my one friend (who shall now be referred to as @Ezbok58a for simplicity sake) went to sleep so my other friend and I went out to get food.
We found a small food court down the street and this place called Mos Burger. Let me tell you, I wish this place existed in the US. They had a burger with like an onion chutney sauce on it which was great. They also serve REAL Coke here of course, none of that High Fructose Corn Syrup crap we get in the US.
At this point we were feeling confident. We made it out of the airport, to the hotel, and even found food. Japan was ours for the taking at this point.
For the rest of the night we roamed the island.
Our island had a great view of Rainbow Bridge. This was often a finishing point for people racing on the expressways back in the 80's and 90's.
Normie shot in front of Rainbow Bridge
Odaiba also has it's own giant Gundam
We came across what looked like a local drift event while we were on the bus. We walked the island and found it. Turns out it was a D1GP event which is pretty big in Japan.
The next day we were staying on the island. We decided to check out the D1GP event. Getting in was free, but paid tickets were required to watch the drifting event and we missed out on getting those sadly. We still got to see a lot of cool stuff and saw some drift action on the big TV and through the stands.
D1GP Full Album Here
-cont in next post-
