One of the most common things I’ve heard lately from friends and acquaintances is how quickly 2012 went by… “I can’t believe it’s already December” many would say, and while it is undeniably December, let me be the first one to tell you that it didn’t exactly sneak up on me. For me, December is a welcome month because it caps of a pretty eventful 2012 for me. You’d never hear me say that I was surprised it was already December because I’ve done a ton of shit this year and my 2012 has been very fulfilling. In fact, it may have been one of the best years of my 30 years on this Earth. I got to experience a lot of new things, got to travel, and spent some quality time with the people I care about. Even ended up going to four weddings this year, which is pretty rare. I’ve been to a couple in the past but not this many within a 365 day period. 2012 was pretty amazing, I must say. There were more than enough highlights to drown out the negatives and I really can’t complain. If we crossed paths this year in some way or another, it’s been a pleasure. I may have been short with you or didn’t really get a chance to chat because I was busy running around everywhere. There are moments that occurred this year that I’ll most certainly remember for the rest of my life. Accomplishments were fruitful in 2012 and I feel like I’m finally at the place where I can say that I’m content and happy with who I am. There are always things to improve upon but I’ve always felt like I had the need to chase something because I was trying to catch-up with life and well…I think I’m all caught-up. Now for 2013, I’m looking to improve and enhance life, not just try to measure up to impossibly high expectations. If my ’13 can be in any way like how my 2012 went, fuck, I’ll be a happy man….

Being that we are just days away from ushering in the new year, I figured today would be a good time to take a look back at the great year that was MMXII (2012) and check out some highlights from the year as well as some of my favorite moments. It’ll be simple; I’ll give you some thoughts on these particular highlights and provide links to some of my favorite posts in case you guys missed them. If you remember them, why not take a look at them again and see if you missed anything. While I was going through all the posts from January until now, I have to admit that it was really entertaining to relive some of the moments from this year. At times we all move to fast and often times we tend to miss out on our opportunities to really capture the moment. I’m guilty of that myself and It’s good to have that ability to look back and reflect…

I’ll try to keep these in chronological order according to how it all went down in 2012. I thought about categorizing them into an order that showed which moment or event I liked the most but it proved to be a difficult cast. Every event or post I made this year offered something different so it just didn’t make sense to try and force myself to pick which was my favorite. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy the look back. I appreciate the fact that my friends and followers are here to be a witness to my everyday life. It’s not all that glamorous but I take pride in doing things my way and offering a unique perspective to the world…

On that note, here is the year that was MMXII…

1. Our Friends From Tactical Art Lead The Way…

Original Post: Tactical Art Meets Super Street and Tactical Art Japan Track Day At Nakayama Circuit

January is typically a slow month for me. The year has just started and the first month is usually saved for planning out the year and waiting for organizers to release their event schedules for the year. There really aren’t any events going on as everyone is prepping for Wekfest San Francisco in February. Back in the early 2000s, Chinatown Showoff would fall either at the end of the month or early February but that show is long gone. Since there isn’t much content out there, there really isn’t anything to post. January is carried by traffic from the Top Ten Hondas list from the previous year and that’s basically it. In January of 2012 however, our friends from Tactical Art sent us some pretty cool footage for the site. One set of photos documented a visit from the Super Street magazine staff as they were in Japan for the Tokyo Auto Salon event. They wanted to feature some of the Hondas from Tactical Art so I served as the middle man and opened up the lines of communication for the two parties. Since I had come to know Atuki and Yasutaka, it was easy to arrange a meeting with them. Later on in the year, you probably saw two of the Tactical Art Hondas featured in Super Street’s annual Honda Issue as well as in Import Tuner…

The post that followed that month was even cooler than the Super Street visit because the Tactical Art guys gave us a glimpse of what they do when they hit the track. There was a track day arranged at the Nakayama Circuit and Yasutaka Shimomukai brought his camera along and documented everything that went on that day. It was an interesting look to see some of their cars in action as well as some other very unique track-spec Hondas. Things started out pretty randomly the year before when I first spotted these guys and got in contact with them, but I’m happy that we’ve been able to develop a friendship over time, even though we are both on opposite ends of the Earth. As you know, they flew out for the 2012 SEMA event later that year and also attended my Year.IV anniversary event. It really helped that they sent me these photos because it helped give the site some very positive momentum at the start of the year…

2. A Look Back At Where The Chronicles Started…

Original Post: Me Being Angry About Stupid Shit

Before I really started getting into photography, or knowing how to use a camera for that matter, the site was filled with editorials on some observations that I had made about our community and things that I really didn’t like. The site is filled with event coverage now but back when the site started, there really weren’t that many photos. Instead I would just post whatever I saw online and whatever random thing I was felling at the moment. I think my early audience enjoyed my commentary and that’s when the site started to pick up steam and grow. Going into my fourth year, I thought it would be cool to look back at a series that I called “An Indepth Look At Horrible Ideas…” and it was really well received by the current audience. In fact, it was one of the most popular posts of the year…

3. The Legendary Wekfest SF Series Continues…

Original Post(s):

Wekfest SF 2012 Weekend Coverage…Part 1…
Wekfest SF 2012 Weekend Coverage…Part 2…
Wekfest SF 2012 Weekend Coverage…Part 3…
Wekfest SF 2012 Weekend Coverage…Part 4…
Wekfest SF 2012 Weekend Coverage…Part 5 of 5…

One of the highlights that we all look forward to every year now is the Wekfest SF event. Even though the Wekfest series has grown into a nationwide tour, there still is no car show that compares to the one and only Wekfest San Francisco event. The caliber of vehicles, the amount of people, and the hype that it has built is just not comparable to anything else. It’s really hard to really get a grasp about what I’m talking about unless you’ve been there yourself. It is THE show to attend yearly and the kick-off event for the import car show season. In 2013, some changes will be made and the SF Wekfest show will shift to later in the year towards the summer time. The Wekfest crew felt that the timing was better and it would be easier on everyone if they didn’t have to worry about the February rain. Many people from all over the country attend this event and many also make the long drive to get to Northern California. The time shift works in everyone’s favor and more project cars should be ready by the early summer. There will also be a completely new venue so it’ll be interesting to see how the Wekfest SF show does in 2013. For now, take a look back at our 5-part Wekfest SF coverage…

4. Presenting… M&M Honda Japan…

Original Post: M&M Honda Collection…

The M&M Honda Integra had been posted and re-posted a countless number of times on the internet. It is a bad ass build and deserves the recognition. The only problem was that there wasn’t a whole lot of information about it and people often referred to it as the “J’s Racing Integra” when it really wasn’t. The Integra was actually a creation of M&M Honda from Japan and M&M serves as one of the principal manufacturer of J’s Racing goods. What the world also didn’t know was that M&M Honda had a pretty sick fleet of Hondas in their own collection and I made a post about it to show you guys what they had to offer. It was one of the highlight posts for me in 2012 because I really enjoyed putting the post together and checking out some of their bad ass builds myself…

5. What We Do…

Original Post: Weekend Warriors…

2012 was a busy year for me and I always made an effort to document whatever I was doing if I felt it was important to show you guys. There were times during the year when I made posts solely dedicated to showing you behind-the-scenes footage of some shoots I had worked on as well as everything that went on during my weekends. This is still a “blog” after all, no matter how hard I tried to move on from the genre so I wanted it to still have that personal touch. This particular post was an important one for me personally because it covered a couple of weekends when I had a chance to shoot my boy DPK David’s EJ1 Civic coupe for an international magazine as well as execute a carefully thought out surprise party for May. I even managed to stumble upon a Lowrider magazine shoot along the way which was being shot by my friend Jae Bueno. The surprise party was definitely the highlight though because I was able to get all of our friends together in one place to celebrate the life of a very special person in my life. The expression on May’s face when we sang the birthday song to her is priceless and it still brings a smile to my face when I watch the video clip of it in the post….

6. Takeshi Comes To America…

Original Post: A Day In The Life…

On the topic of having that personal feel, this was another post from the year that I really enjoyed putting together. Our friend Takeshi Kobayashi flew out from Japan to do some work and whenever Takeshi is around, we usually take him out to eat and hang out. He was out here a lot this year and it is always a pleasure to have him around. This post was also cool because it was one of the rare times when I posted up some photos of my own car. As many followers as this site has, I think a ton of people still don’t know that I have a car myself that I’ve been modding for a couple of years now….

7. Little Acts of Kindness…

Original Post: Little Acts of Kindness…

If there was one post on The Chronicles that reached any sort of “virality” this year, it was definitely this one…. The quick summary of it goes like this: I went out one Saturday morning to go shoot a car for Honda Tuning magazine in Downtown Los Angeles. While I was there shooting, I noticed a small puppy that was walking around in our general vicinity. I didn’t think anything of it until it came up closer to where I was shooting. It was just a puppy but it was pretty filthy and most likely a stray. It was hungry and tired, but a very nice dog. It sort of just walked around and sat down by us as I was shooting, probably just happy to enjoy the company. The owner of the car I was shooting had some food so he gave the puppy some food and it was quick to eat it. When I wrapped up the shoot, the puppy was still there and looked as if it didn’t want us to go. I really wanted to take the puppy home but I myself had two cats already, and wasn’t sure how they would deal with a puppy, so I couldn’t. As I drove away, I felt really bad about leaving the puppy behind so I made a post about it on Facebook. My friend Arn Reyes caught wind of the post as well as a couple of others, and Arn immediately went down to Downtown to see if he could find the dog. I’ll save the end of the story for those who care enough to go back and read the post, but it is a pretty heart-warming story.

The story actually kind of blew up and was reposted everywhere. Even the Humane Society and some other pet-related websites got a hold of the story and it spread all over the web. Arn was a hero and many thought that I was an asshole for leaving the dog behind. Apparently I was a heartless bastard and some even wished ill will upon me. In the end, I was just happy that Arn and his family came through and they truly are heroes. If it takes me being a piece of shit for someone to have a happy home with a healthy puppy, then I guess I’ll have to take that, haha…

8. Glory Days…

Original Post: Glory Days…

Ryan and the rest of the guys over at Rywire are very good friends of mine and when there were pockets of time when I didn’t have any good content to post on the site, I would pick up my camera and head down to Rywire. They always got something interesting going on so there is always something cool to photograph. This was a highlight post of 2012 for me personally because it contained some of my favorite personal photos from the year, and it was all done randomly. Takeshi was also in town to visit also so there are some random shots of us eating and what not as well. It was the perfect combination of randomness and Rywire content…

9. Drifting? Why not?…

Original Post(s):

Formula D Long Beach 2012 Coverage…Part 1…
Formula D Long Beach 2012 Coverage…Part 2…
Formula D Long Beach 2012 Coverage…Part 3…

I’ve always been a fan of drifting and drifting culture, I just never have enough time to cover all of it. Whenever I do have time though, I try to make it out there to see what is new. Formula D opened its 2012 season in Long Beach and they had a “Slammed Society” car show coinciding with it, so we decided to bring our cars out and spend the day there. The weather was perfect that day so I was able to capture some really cool images from the event. Not nearly enough drifting action, but plenty of shots of everything else surrounding it. It was one of my favorites of the year because it was one of the rare occasions in 2012 where I actually got to see a small glimpse of what was new in the pro drifting world…

10. USDM Style Takes Over Japan…

Original Post(s):

USDM Jam 9.0 Coverage…Part 1…
USDM Jam 9.0 Coverage…Part 2…
USDM Jam 9.0 Coverage…Part 3…
USDM Jam 9.0 Coverage…Part 4 of 4…

As you know, I absolutely LOVE Japanese car culture. It’s the foundation for what we do out here now in the U.S. so I’m always interested to see what is going on in Japan. In the last couple of years, “USDM” style has become pretty popular in Japan and they have taken our interpretation of their style, and re-introduced it into their own culture by displaying what they feel is “USDM”. The result is a very cool mix of styles with true Japanese tuning still very much an important part of their community. USDM Jam is the premier series that provides an outlet for this style to be displayed and their 9th annual event proved to be their best. I was happy to host some photos of the event here on the site, as captured by some of my Japanese contacts and I enjoyed looking at the photos as much as doing the write-up for it for you guys…

11. The Ghosts of Imports’ Past…

Original Post: Exclusive Content…The Import Car Show Scene from ’99 – 2001…(NWS)

In the list of the most viewed posts of the year, this particular post ranks up there as probably the top 3 of 2012. Why? Well because it is honestly a pretty cool post. It contains photos that I took with a film camera over a decade ago of some old car shows I attended. It’s crazy to see how much has changed in the last decade and interesting to see what the car show scene had to offer back then. You may not agree with the styling cues and overall aesthetics of 99-2001 but if you were around then to experience it, you appreciated it and had great memories. If you missed out on the post, make sure to check it out…

12. More Car Culture From Japan…

Original Post(s):

Hellaflush Kansai 2012 Coverage…Part 1…
Hellaflush Kansai 2012 Coverage…Part 2…

This was by far one of my favorite events to post about in 2012. Some of the stance stuff worldwide is getting a little out of hand but the Hellaflush Kansai event was a great one for the site because we were all formally introduced to the Banzai Attack K20 EF Civic and Takuya Nishikawa’s sick CD Accord build. There were some great shots of both cars in the posts as well as some other amazing builds that you wouldn’t see anywhere else but here on The Chronicles…

13. Glory Days 2 and Wekfest LA Prep…

Original Post: Glory Days…Part 2… and Wekfest LA 2012 Coverage…Part 1: Show Prep…

The two posts here were very similar and that’s why I decided to separate this from the rest of the Wekfest LA 2012 Coverage. It was a much more indepth look into what goes on the days leading up to a major show and there are some shots of the guys from ATS Garage and DPK working on their Hondas. Like the other Glory Days post, it has some of my favorite photos from the year. There are a lot of candid moments and photos of us just hanging out with one another doing car shit. What more could you ask for?…

This is getting pretty lengthy so I’ll cut it off here for today. Have a great weekend everyone. Back with Part 2 later…