When we last left off, we were deep into the middle of day 2 of Tokyo Auto Salon 2013. As I stated before, I only went to TAS ’13 for the first two days because we had all made plans before our trip began to go to the Twin Ring Motegi. Our Japanese friend and Chronicles regular Takeshi Kobayashi met up with us in Tokyo and offered to give us a ride to Motegi that Sunday. On day 2, we didn’t see a whole lot of him since he was off doing his own thing while we were trying to see as much of the show as we could before the day ended. In Part 4, you got to see us go to dinner with Hiro Ueda and the guys from USDM FREAX and at the close of Part 5 today, you’ll get a glimpse of another dinner that Hiro planned for us after the show. This may get a little confusing for some of you who aren’t familiar with all the Japanese publications but our dinner at the end of day 2 of TAS ’13 is with USDM Magazine, a completely different Japanese magazine devoted to USDM car culture. I’ll get into more details on our dinner later but for now, we’re gonna take some time closing out the TAS show with some more pics. Tomorrow we are going into an entirely new portion of our trip and you’ll get to see our journey to the famed Twin Ring…

Here are links to the previous four parts if you missed any of it…

The Chronicles 2013 Japan Trip…Part 1: Intro and TAS 2013 Coverage…
The Chronicles 2013 Japan Trip…Part 2: TAS 2013 Coverage…
The Chronicles 2013 Japan Trip…Part 3: More TAS 2013 Day 1 Coverage…
The Chronicles 2013 Japan Trip…Part 4: Dinner With USDM FREAX and Day 2 of TAS ’13…

And now, the last batch of Tokyo Auto Salon 2013 coverage…

Since we only had a half-day on the first day of TAS, the challenge was finding the time to see everything else on day 2. The event was massive and I honestly was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to capture everything…

One of the first cars I spotted when I walked into the Yokohama Advan section was this FD3S RX-7 with complete C-West aero kit and Advan RS-DF wheels…

HKS Supercharged Toyota 86 D1GP democar on newly released gold Advan RGIII…

HKS Kansai Service R35 GTR on Advan GT wheels…

After market tuning mastermind Tommy Kaira had a huge display at TAS ’13, including this Audi R8 convertible representing their Euro/VIP segment under the name “Rowen”…

Rowen Lexus LS-F Premium Sports…

Tommy Kaira 86 RR Street Zero…Loving the use of Prodrive wheels on all the Tommy Kaira/Rowen vehicles…

Art Tech Hanatsuka R34 Skyline GTR…one of only a few BNR34s at TAS…

One of the other R34s was this T-Get Works Skyline parked right next to it….

I couldn’t get a good shot of this Varis widebody Evo X but the main reason I took this photo was to show you guys the full carbon doors. The rears don’t even have a window and is a solid piece of carbon…

JUN Auto always reppin’ their signature yellow tone…

JUN “Akira” R35 GTR on Advan’s new forged Model F7 wheel. The Akira GTR features all JUN aero with a JUN-built VR38DETT that makes around 870HP…

JUN “KH” R35 GTR with complete Ben Sopra widebody kit and Advan GT wheels… Worth mentioning was this kid standing to the right of this photo. His dad was busy taking pictures and looking at cars, completely ignoring what the kid was doing and the whole time, I watched this kid standing on the carbon fiber sideskirt of the KH GTR and grabbing everything in sight…

JUN-built VR38DETT motor on display…

Really crazy and awe-inspiring to see the Top Fuel S2000RR in person…

The time and detail that went into creating the custom aero pieces is just ridiculous…

RE Amemiya’s “Hurricane 7″…

Endless Taisan Super GT Porsche 911 GT3 R…

Arvou S2000 with Powerhouse Amuse Legalo Face aero kit…

R32 Skyline GTR on Work Emotion CR-Kiwami…

Art Works Toyota Aristo with a ton of custom body work. Look at the grooves and recessed sections of the front fenders and the radius work in the rear…

Nice use of the Work Meister M1R wheel with the flat black face and bronze lip…

Chargespeed Subaru WRX STi…

Lexus LS460 F-Sport at the Work Wheels booth sitting on soon-to-be released Work Durandal wheels…

Junction Produce Bentley Contintental GT convertible…

Junction Produce Bentley Contintental Flying Spur…

Artis debuted this wild Dodge Challenger build with their 3D Diablock Violetpearl paint.. The tiled texture on the body is actually paint!..

Lexus GS F-Sport on Vossen wheels at the ACC Inc. booth…

Wild Job Design Lexus LS on display at the Universal Air area…

This Audi TT looked nuts with the one-piece custom rear quarter panels and Lambo wheels. It looks even more odd in this photo because it was airing up and down when I snapped this pic and only got it as it was full airred-up…

Ferrari F430 Scuderia looking great at the Fabulous booth on their new Pandemic wheels…

This Toyota Vellfire van was also featured at the Fabulous booth seated on Pandemic LW-8 Monoblock wheels…

Roberuta suspension systems spared no expense in bringing out THREE Ferrari F40s all on air…

Toyota 86 Sports Line by Wald…

Auto Veloce Ferrari 458 Italia…

Wald Black Bison Rolls Royce Ghost…

The Audi R8 is cool but I mainly snapped this pic so you guys can see how crazy some of the Japanese are over the female models/”Race Queens” that were at TAS ’13. It was a madhouse whenever females were around and it was one of the main reasons why I missed out on some of the major booths like VeilSide…

With time running out and the end of day 2 coming to an end. I decided to call it a day and just walked around the show to finally look at the cars. I almost felt like I wasn’t even at the Tokyo Auto Salon show because I was so busy taking pictures. I didn’t really get a chance to check out that many of the cars in detail because I was so concentrated on taking a clean photo and moving onto the next car. I think if I make another trip to TAS in the future, I’ll make plans to stay that third day just to be able to have time to look at the cars for myself..

While walking around, I spotted Brandon from BOWLS L.A. doing some filming…

…Jonathan Wong from Super Street magazine waved in the background while Brandon was doing a video segment with Noriko “Coco” Komatsu…

Here’s one of the two titanium Top Secret coffee mugs I bought at Tokyo Auto Salon…

Since there was still a dinner to attend later that evening, we decided to meet up at around 4pm so we could catch a train back to Shinagawa. Being that the venue was so big, it took some time for everyone to return to the meeting area…

Eventually we all met up and headed back to our hotel. This concluded our TAS adventure and now it was time to meet the guys from USDM Magazine…

USDM Magazine is a fairly new publication. They’re only one issue in but it looks pretty promising. They have a solid staff on board and one of their guys used to be one of the editors over at Option magazine. Option has been THE automotive publication in Japan for years now so you know that they have a knowledgeable staff….

Here was their first cover vehicle, Satoru Hasegawa’s EG8 Civic Ferio…

Once again, Hiro did an amazing job of arranging this dinner for us and the style of meal that we were having this time around, was very similar to the multi-course dinner we had the night before with the USDM FREAX team. As usual, I can’t seem to remember the name of the spot we ate at. I think it was “Gyoro Gyoro” if I remember correctly but I could be wrong…

Salem is missing from the dinner once again because he decided to head to TAS later than everyone else since he was still feeling sick that morning. I originally told him to meet up with us at the show, but we ended up leaving the show earlier than expected and we had no other way of getting a hold of him all day. We later found out that he had recovered and was feeling much better. He went to the show on his own, walked the entire show, and went back to the hotel where he chowed down on some JDM McDonald’s. Our dinner was just getting started. Since we had a smaller group with us this time around, the dinner was in a much more intimate setting. The lay-out of this restaurant was completely different also. We had a private dining room so it almost felt as if we were the only ones eating. The food, though another traditional multi-course dinner, consisted of a totally different menu….

Nick holding up a piece of delicious Sashimi…

Once again, shout-out to Hiro for being a gracious host and planning out our fancy meals…

Steam crab was a delightful surprise. I love eating crab and was excited to see how different it was in Japan…

A plate featuring a variety of different types of Sashimi…

Sapporo was on tap and after walking around all day, we were definitely thirsty and in need of some hydration…

Hot and cold Sake was also offered to us and since we were free to drink whatever we wanted and no one had to drive home, we decided to take some shots to celebrate our journey to Japan with our new found Japanese friends…

I was joking around with Hiro and tried to get him to take a Sake shot out of an empty crab shell and he was totally down… Turns out that it is a pretty common thing in Japan…

Ryan also decided to get in on the fun…

Steamed fish with bean sprouts, green beans, and Daikon…

One of the guys from USDM Magazine taking a look at Joy’s Subaru when it was featured on the cover of Import Tuner magazine…

Cold Udon noodles with some dried seawood…

I didn’t take nearly as many photos during dinner as I did the first night because I had to do an interview with USDM Magazine towards the end of dinner. They wanted to do a feature on me and the site and who was I to refuse? They also interviewed Ryan and Ken from Wek’Sos as well. Pretty cool stuff. I don’t know when it is going to run or what issue it’ll be in but I’ll be sure to update you guys. I doubt you guys would be interested anyways since it’ll all be in Japanese…

Anyways, that was basically it for our night. We hung out for a while afterwards and then they did some photos with us inside the restaurant and outside. All of us were pretty beat by the end of the night since we had done so much walking at TAS so we called it a night early. The next day, we had to be up by 7am to meet up with Takeshi at 8 to head to Twin Ring Motegi. It was a couple hours away so we wanted to make the most of our day. I got all kinds of photos from that day including a mini Bosozoku meet we came across on our way to Twin Ring. Thanks for looking everyone. HUGE thanks go out to Hiro Ueda for taking care of us and to the USDM Magazine guys for buying us dinner. They are a great group of guys and I wish their magazine the best in the future…

Stay tuned for more Japan coverage!…