Man, I wish I was in Japan right now…While everyone is busy sitting at the airport and waiting to board their flights to Japan for the upcoming Tokyo Auto Salon event, I’m leaving my bags unpacked because I don’t have the resources to get there, haha. Kinda lame because I honestly thought that by this point, I’d be making the trip out to the mecca of Japanese automotive tuning, but hey, that’s just how things work sometimes. Maybe next year or a couple years down the road I’ll finally be able to get there. In the meantime, I’ll just be like many of you, sitting at home behind a computer screen waiting to see coverage of TAS 2012. When I do go I’d really like to make a big trip out of it and see all the things I’ve always wanted to see but that’s all a pipe dream right now. I went once in 2001 but that was just to visit with my family and totally not car-related. Ah well, enough of the bitterness, let’s move on…

I have just a small update for you guys today. I’m still working on some stuff but I really want to get all these orders out and get some more product ready for the rest of this year. There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day lately but I’m glad that there is work rolling in again so that I can get back on “the grind”. As far as work goes, there are a lot of good cars being featured in mags in the upcoming months so be on the look out for that. I myself am in awe of some of the cars that are being sent my way to do stories on. They say print is slowly going to fade away in the coming years but man, with the type of content that magazines like Honda Tuning, Super Street, and Import Tuner are producing, it’s going to be hard to deny that print is still a very important force within our community…

Anyways, the photos today are just a couple of random photos that the Tactical Art guys sent me from the X5 Nagoya event from a couple months before. X5 is basically like the equivalent of Hot Import Nights over here..there are a ton of like DUB-style vehicles and lowrider stuff, with a very small showing of pure Japanese performance builds. They love the American lifestyle and that’s why shows like X5 are popular over there. I’m not going to spend time showing you guys stuff you don’t want to see, like donk’d out Tahoes and shit. I’m just going to put up whatever Honda content they sent me that I felt was relative to what you guys want to see. I know that we are all not on the XXR bandwagon and a majority of us could give two shits about their crappy wheels, but take the photos in stride. The Tactical Art guys are selling these wheels over there beacuse again, many Japanese enthusiasts love the American style of tuning and what they see many times when they go online are photos of cars with bike racks and knock-off wheels. They have taken a liking to the style so they want to reproduce that look over there. We may not agree with it but I’m sure there are also a ton of things that they don’t necessarily agree with when it comes to stuff that we do to our cars so it’s hard to really knock them for it. They just don’t know that much about wheel companies like XXR and just want that “look”. For the X5 show, much to our dismay, the guys rolled out with their complete XXR line-up. None of these wheels are permanent so like I said, just take the photos in stride…

On with the photos…Thanks once again to the Tactical Art guys for providing these photos…

The Tactical Art line-up for the day…

Whenever I see photos of DC5 Honda Integras from Japan, they are usually decked-out in full race form so it’s refreshing to see one that is a little more simple and much more suited for street cruising…

This four-door Civic looked pretty good and is another good Japanese representation of the “USDM style”… Air Walker bumper, custom BBS RS wheels, and black Recaro seats….It’s a good look. I think our buddy Tetsuya Yamaguichi from USDM Jam is familiar with this car because I’ve seen this car pop up at a lot of his events….

The bay is shaved and tucked as well…It still retains the air conditioning, power steering, and the brake lines and fuel lines look untouched but not a bad job overall…

A clean white EG on another set of BBS RS wheels…

A little odd to see a company like Spoon Sports at an event like this but they had a big display and everything. The had their CR-Z, Fit and even an old school E-AT Civic…

It’s probably more of just a display vehicle for them now but they have kept this thing in amazing condition…

Check out the passenger side-exit exhaust…

Oh and I know some of you were asking for on-board videos of the Tactical Art guys from their track day at Nakayama Circuit (from the previous post)…well the only video that has surfaced so far from them is a on-board video from Ryotaro Nakao, who had the gutted-out white EG with the Chargespeed seat and Takata harnesses… I don’t know if you guys can view this if you don’t have Facebook, but check the link and see if it’ll work for you. For those who do have Facebook, it may work for you or if not, try logging in first, trust me, it’s safe…

Click here for Ryotaro Nakao’s lap at Nakayama Circuit…

That’s all for today, I hope all you guys that made it to Tokyo Auto Salon have a wonderful time… I’ll have an eye out for content from Flickr and various sources…Have a good one everybody…