Auto Otaku: Car and Life

Shiodome and Cruising Tokyo Bay

Last weekend, in celebration of our first wedding anniversary, my wife Kaori and I headed to Tokyo to take a nighttime dinner cruise. We had been planning it for a while, and because I was shooting an event on the day of our actual anniversary, we celebrated the following weekend. Gotta love having an understanding wife!

Anyways, before heading to Hinode wharf to get on the ship, we dropped by Shiodome to check out Nippon Television and some other the other stuff there.

The whole area is full of towering sky scrapers.

The centerpeice of the area is this huge disneyland-looking clock that was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's animated films. NTV has a close relationship with Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli, and there are tons of Ghibli goods for sale in their gift shop.

Very futuristic architecture here.

A Shinagawa-bound Shinkansen bullet train speeds past Shiodome. You can see the top of Tokyo Tower in the background. This shot is "so Japan".

After hanging around there for a little bit, it was time to head to Hinode wharf on the Yurikamome train.

There's the view from the dock with the futuristic Himiko tied up under a cloudy evening sky.

The Rainbow Bridge and Odaiba to the south.

There's our ship, the Symphony Classica. 

Preparing to board.

Once onboard we were treated to a fine Italian meal.

The ship's route took us on a big loop around Tokyo bay, passing by landmarks like Odaiba, Haneda Airport, and Tokyo Disneyland. It was too dark to take any good photos, but it was a great relaxing time and a fine way to celebrate one year of marriage with my wife.

A few more pics from the day here.

Old Photos: Tsukuba Circuit May '08

I have been slowly going through my old photos in my spare time, organizing and uploading them on to Flickr for extra online storage. This latest batch comes from Tsukuba Circuit back in May of this year. Tsukuba is a busy track and on this particular weekday there were a few different events happening including a standard group soukoukai, a Bridgestone testing session with the Mine's R34 GT-R some and others, and lastly the private Rauh Welt track session which I posted about on Speedhunters.

Here are a few quick shots from that day-

Private R35 GT-R.

Another R35 in the pits (among others).

Endless Evo X.

E92 M3 on black TE's.

Fighter Engineering Cappuccino.

Sexy E30 M3.

Exedy S2000 gymkhana SPL.

Mine's BNR34. This car is positively amazing.

You may have heard a thing or two about these guys.

The man himself.

86 perfection.

Yep, just another day at Tsukuba.

More pics here.

I Heart Honda!! 2008

Last month, my friend from AME wheels gave me a call to let me know about a huge all-Honda event that will be going down at Tsukuba Circuit this Friday. The event is called I Heart Honda!! and Spoon Sports is one of the main organizers of it.

I have been reading updates about it on the official site and I keep getting more and more exciting reading about it. It basically sounds like it will be the Hyper Meeting of Hondas.

Scheduled events include demo car battles and displays, free soukoukai sessions, classic Honda displays and much more. Participating tuners will include Spoon (of course), J's Racing, Honda Twincam, Route KS, and many more.

Hot Version will also be shooting the event for an upcoming DVD. Pro drivers will include Tsuchiya, Orido, and Taniguchi just to name a few.

Man, I am pumped for this one. Expect to see full coverage on Speedhunters next week! Just wanted to post a quick heads up here.

Old Photos: Mt. Tsukuba

Time to catch up on things with some more older photos. Here we have a trip up to the top of Mt. Tsukuba from back in May. I wrote a piece about Tsukba-san's touge on Speedhunters a few weeks ago, but the area is also a popular destination for people looking to take in some scenic views and fresh mountain air.

Many times when traveling to and from Tokyo on the Tsukuba Express, I see people on the train wearing full "wilderness gear" and it's obvious that these people are Tokyo residents heading to and from Mt. Tsukuba.

This was actually my first trip up to the top of the mountain and I ended up really impressed (and exhausted) after the trip.

Anyways, a few photos-

After a quick drive up the mountain, you get to the "main" area with hotels, a temple, plus some shops and other things.

Pretty awesome tree.

I guess this is the sort of scene that comes to people's minds when they hear "Japan".

Huge shrine.

From there, to get it up to the top of the mountain you have to take this cable car.

The grade is REALLY steep. Kinda makes you dizzy. It was a very cool experience.

Passing another cable car headed down the hill.

The cable car takes you up to the main summit of the mountain where there is a restaurant and a small snack bar that serves up some mean ice cream.

If you want to go to the REAL top of the mountain, you have continue with a small hike up this trail. Some of the climbing involved some rocks that looked like they could be pretty dangerous if an accident were to happen. Adventure right?

And finally up to the top.

Another shrine up at the peak.

Apparently you can see as far as Tokyo and Mt. Fuji from up here on a clear day. On this hazy day we could only see as far Tsukuba City though. You probably have to go during the winter to get the really awesome view.

Well, there's a trip to Mt. Tsukuba in nut shell. A few more pics can be found here.

Old Photos: Akihabara and Ikebukuro

I just went through some more photos from earlier this spring/summer and wanted to post a few shots from Akihabara and Ikebukuro in Tokyo. I was showing my brother at around at this time and brought my camera along for a little tourist action of my own.

Anyway, here are a few shots-

I have to go through Akihabara every time I go to Tokyo, but I'm not really interested in anime or the other stuff that draws people to Akiba so I usually just pass right through. Occasionally I will drop by the arcade to waste some money playing Battle Gear 4 or go to the HUGE Yodobashi Camera store to check out all the cool stuff though.

Getting around Tokyo can be daunting even for Japanese people. I took this photo in Akihabara Station. This map is only for the JR lines and doesn't include the tons of different subway lines or other private lines. Damn. Luckily I have been getting pretty good at getting around Tokyo recently.

Busy as usual outside Akihabara Station. That white sign you see there is a promotion for Tokyo's ongoing bid to host the 2016 summer olympics.

Playing around with the 50mm f1.8 on the Yamanote line train.

Ride the trains in the middle of the day and everything will be pretty relaxed like this. Totally different story in the morning or in the evening though...

We headed to Ikebukuro to check out the view from the observation floor on top of the Sunshine 60 Building.

This is not for those who are afraid of heights...

Looking through the haze towards Shinjuku.

I go to Tokyo fairly often but it's still amazing to look out over the vastness of the city.

Train winding through a sea of apartment buildings. A typical Tokyo scene. 

Back on the ground another random shot from the streets of Ikebukuro.

And lastly a Tokyo-bound Yamanote-sen train pulling into Ikebukuro station in the afternoon. Besides cars I'm kind of a geek for trains, airplanes, and ships so you will probably see a lot of photos of those things here. 

There are few other pics from the day here.

Until next time...

Matsuri Tsukuba 2008

A while back I said that I was going to start putting more personal/non-car stuff on this blog. Well finally I had a little time to go through some photos that I took at the Tsukuba Natsu Matsuri late last month so decided to post them up here.

In the summer, nearly every city in Japan holds a festival of sorts. I guess the closest thing you could compare it to in the states would be the city or county fair although there are a lot of differences. For example the town matsuri is usually held right in the center of town and the streets are blocked off for parades and other activities and its free to get in.

Besides the parades, there are tons of booths selling traditional Japanese carnival foods like takoyaki, okonomiyaki, yakisoba and other good stuff. Of course there is also plenty of delicious draft beer on tap.

The Tsukuba Matsuri was really fun except for the fact that it was raining the whole time. Damn, summer weather in Japan sucks. Or at least it did this year.

Anyways, here are a few pics I snapped of the parade before I got worried about my camera getting screwed up in the rain.

The gloomy looking weather isn't really a good match for a summer festival, but oh well. Here you can see the parade making its way through the center of the city and all the people gathered to check it out. I have never seen this many people in Tsukuba before.

Some traditional Japanese summer wear.

Because of the rain, all of the floats were covered in plastic covers which made them a kind of difficult to photograph.

I am not well versed in traditional Japanese culture, but these things look pretty damn cool.

El toro?

All the "floats" are carried by people and it looks like pretty hard work.

Here some members of the Ibaraki Golden Golds baseball team are taking a quick break from carrying theirs.

Sweet cat.

There are a few more photos I uploaded right here.

I decided I'm going to buy a new point and shoot camera so I can take more photos of cool stuff I see for this blog. Hopefully it will become a cool mix of car stuff, Japan stuff, music, or whatever else.

I promise I will update again very soon...