It was the next morning, we were just about to hit the road but the night before had seen a cheap JZX100 back up in Fukushima so we decided to go up for a look. I didn’t really know what to do with a lot of these photos as I didn’t want there to be a mega feature for the next one, so our exit day has its own little article.
I love when something comes through the inbox that stands out. This lovely 2 door was freshly snapped by an up and coming young chap known as Dylan Walsh who’s just fifteen years of age and already has a great eye for cars and photography.
We were exhausted but once again the recent activities had the adrenaline flowing and we fought off the tiredness. This may very well be the last time we see these places so we figured there was no point crashing and going asleep pure stubbornness.
So a fresh year is upon us with the Irish automotive calendar. We decided to check out what was happening and modified live. IDC was in full swing and as we discussed before, the event gets more than its share of coverage so it’s unnecessary for us to be giving it full coverage.
So if you have been following these Japan features so far you get the idea they have been pretty in-depth. Each has about 40-50 images. I found it extremely difficult to scale it back any further, I’m always the guy that’s eager for more shots…
You’re fifteen years of age, your Dad tells you Christmas and birthdays sorted for the foreseeable future, somehow you have ended up with your dream car. You look outside and you are the proud owner of an AE86.
After the chaos of the night before, we almost forgot about the full day that lay ahead. The King of Asia drift series which was taking place at Ebisu circuit was happening, it was the reason we were up around these parts.
You can see the inspiration from Nakai everywhere with Alex. He was the first person to enquire about bringing Nakai and build an RWB car outside of Japan. The result was Royal Ocean that you can see here, this was the first one to be built in Canada.
An hour had passed and I had started to feel like things were going sour. It started to drizzle so we stood in under the 24-hour vending machine area as we eagerly waited to see what would next.
Being home almost a year I felt it was fitting to do a feature on a place I can call my second home. This place helped re-spark my interest with Juicebox, it also saved me from packing my bags a couple of times where I was close to moving back to Ireland.
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.