UPDATE!!! As of 3:45am PST, Tetsuya Yamaguchi informed me that he has spoken to a friend and that the friend has notified him that Takeshi is indeed safe. What exactly that entails I do not know as of this time. He’s alive and well, which is great news. Hopefully his shop and home and what not are also safe and haven’t received significant damage. I’ll give everyone an update as soon as I hear anything else in the morning!!..

As most of you have heard by now, a 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit Japan at 2:46pm. I’ll spare you the details because it is all over the news, TV, etc. and you can easily find out information about it. The death toll continues to rise and a couple of hours from now, I am sure even more information will be released regarding damages and what neighboring countries and islands will be on Tsunami watch and/or evacuation. I personally, am especially worried about our friend and fellow enthusiast, Takeshi Kobayashi. Takeshi always makes the trip out from Japan for all of the biggest events out here and I always make an effort to speak to him and spend some time with him while he’s out here. When I found out about the quake, I quickly hopped on Facebook to see if Takeshi and our other friends like Tetsuya Yamaguchi were affected. Tetsuya posted up right away as soon as the quake hit and he’s notified many of us stateside that he’s okay because he is in a different area of Japan, but I am sad to say that we still have yet to hear from Takeshi. He’s actually from the Sendai area, which is near the epicenter of where the quake hit, which makes me very, very worried about his safety and whereabouts. I immediately hit up Tetsuya on Facebook to see if he had come in contact with him or had heard anything but he too tells me that he is anxious to hear from him. All we can do now is wait…I will try to update everyone as soon as I hear anything, but for now, there’s nothing else we can do but hope for the best. It’s crazy to think that I just spoke to him and hung out with him for a bit recently at Wekfest 2011 before the show began and now a disaster like this occurs directly where his home is and none of us have any idea if he is okay or not…That was just a month ago…

Here’s a picture of him (far left)  from last year’s Eibach 2010 event with Tetsuya Yamaguchi and HeyMikeyyyy…

I know this may seem far removed from most of you guys that just casually look through this site, but for me and the rest of the homies, we are all hoping for the best. We love seeing Takeshi out here in America on the west coast and it’s a pleasure to have him in our company. The guy is always such a huge fan of what we do out here and I enjoy his enthusiasm. One of the greatest things about doing this site is that I’ve been able to meet people from all over the world like Tetsuya and Takeshi. These guys are what make this community so great and remind us that such a simple hobby like cars can result in us making friends with people from all parts of the world.

Even if you aren’t a person of faith or religion, please pray and have the people of Japan in your thoughts… If anyone has any information or hears from Takeshi, please leave a comment or email me to let me know if he is okay. Thank you and thanks to Tetsuya Yamaguchi for constantly giving us updates as to the situation overseas….