Anytime we are in Osaka, we always try to pass by Tactical Art to see all the latest updates on their projects. Yasu and the guys are good friends of ours so we always make sure to show them love. They take care of us in Osaka so whenever we are there, it always seems like we are just hanging out with the homies back at home and it doesn’t feel like we are in a foreign place. Wekfest Japan is probably one of the most anticipated events out there so they are already gearing up for it by finishing up some new projects. They should have a solid line-up for the show with some of their more recognized builds along with some new stuff for everyone to see. Below are photos from the visit along with the latest Vlog documenting our time in Osaka. The video has some pretty interesting, and very random, content and I think you guys will enjoy it. Make sure to watch all of it thoroughly and listen to the audio as best you can, otherwise you might miss out on some important details. There is a lot of stuff to go through today so I’ll keep it brief. The video is a bit longer`than the other ones just because I wanted to make sure to include some events on our trip that I didn’t fully capture in photos. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you like the Vlogs. Sometimes I upload the videos ahead of the actual updates on the site so you can watch the videos as soon as they go up instead of having to wait in anticipation. Enjoy….

The Chronicles Vlog #4 (Part 7): Random Osaka Explorations and A Visit To Tactical Art…

And here are the stills that I collected during this portion of our journey….

Conveyor belt sushi at ¥130 per plate ($1.10 USD) always sounds like a good idea…

Raw egg and tuna…

Fresh vagina sushi…haha, just kidding, it’s oyster with some torched cheese on top…

This is the raw whale meat that you saw the guys eating in the latest Vlog….

One of the sushi chefs taking a torch to some shrimp sushi…

In the evening we made our way over to Shinsekai district of Osaka for dinner with some friends….

We had a pretty large group with us that ranged from friends in Japan to visitors from the U.S. like Matt from ICB Motorsport…

Beer, as always, was on tap for dinner….

Hiro’s latest and favorite item from the U.S., a Sriracha bottle keychain. He loves his Sriracha and you just can’t get it in Japan…

One of the things that you really have to get used to about eating in Japan is that smoking is allowed and quite frequent…

Seeing my friends have a great time and creating new memories always makes the hard work worth it….

Sara was a bit under the weather but she still came out to chill with us. We were all kind of just drinking and smoking so she just casually napped. There was no one else in the restaurant so we just did whatever we wanted…

Jonathan was out and about in China and Hong Kong for a family wedding but found his way over to Osaka to have a drink with us….

Hiro kicked off the night with some Sake shots with Robert…

Good to finally meet up with ICB Matt for dinner…He’s always out in Japan during TAS week but we just never get a chance to grab a meal together….

After dinner we walked around Osaka and spotted this Toyota Crown from Funny Fellows car club parked nonchalantly in a random lot…

Most of that day was spent just doing shopping and non-car stuff so we will move forward to the next day where we visit Tactical Art…

Before heading to the shop, Yasu took us to a local eatery in the area that served traditional Osaka-style Takoyaki, which is a wheat-flour based dumpling cooked on a Takoyaki pan. The contents inside usually vary but the most popular is to have it made of minced/diced octopus…

Salem using his Samsung Galaxy S5 to make a time-lapsed video of the entire cooking process, which is pretty interesting….

The finished Takoyaki before it is boxed with seasoning…

Once we got our orders, we headed over to Tactical Art to eat….

The finished product. You gotta be careful when you eat these things because they are usually blazing hot….

The latest project that they had just completed was Kazuya Kawashima aka Chibichan’s Civic Ferio. You guys will probably remember it looking more like THIS, in its previous stage when it was a darker red tone. He actually got into a pretty bad accident awhile back and the car had some extensive damage to it. I think to the point where it would be considered a total loss here in the U.S. They had done so much fabrication work to the entire car that they didn’t want it to go to waste so they saved the car and opted to rebuild it. The entire front end was cut off and a donor Ferio front end was welded back onto the chassis. You wouldn’t even think it was in an accident by how clean the work was. After the front was fixed they decided to repaint the entire car a brighter shade of red and also did a K20 engine swap…

As mentioned before, K-swaps still aren’t nearly as popular or common as they are here in the U.S. but we’re starting to see more K-swapped cars pop up all over Japan…

Custom fuel set-up using Hybrid Racing products….

Wilwood brake master cylinder with Rywire booster delete and S2000 clutch master….

The engine bay matches many of their other shop builds and is painted in their own custom shade of “Tactical Art Grey”….

What I like about how the Tactical Art guys do their engine bays is that they are comparable to the best bays out here in the States. They really have a good understanding of how to execute a bay and well, as you can see, they “get it”…

Custom plate on the dash to cover the exposed hole created for the cage…

A look inside Chibichan’s Ferio…The inside is also painted Tactical Art Grey to match the bay…

The custom cage fabricated by Atsuki of Tactical Art…

“ENJOY CAR LIFE”….

Masashi Kameoka’s EF9 SiR Civic was back at Tactical Art for some new upgrades. The engine bay is looking great as usual…

…but the main purpose of its return was for a new fuel system set-up…

Since the interior is completely gutted in his EF, there is no gas lid cable or anything left inside to pop the cap so they installed a latch to hold it in place…

The inside of his EF9 with his favorite red jacket…

Fuel system set-up with custom brackets and hardlines created by Atsuki of Tactical Art…

One build that I was really happy to see coming together was Atsuki’s EG6 race car. If you remember, he crashed his Civic (CLICK HERE TO SEE IT) on the track and the shell was thrown away. He saved all the parts in the event that some day he would have a chance to build another and sure enough, he found another shell and is already working on it whenever he has some free time…

The coating underneath the chassis has been completely stripped-off and every section of it is getting stitched-welded for rigidity…

I am unclear as to what condition this EG chassis was in when he acquired it but the front end has also been chopped off like Chibichan’s Ferio…

A new cage has been fabricated and welded into the Civic…

A custom plate created by Atsuki to hold the one-off dashboard in place…

The rear wheel wells and shock tower area has also been stripped-down and awaits some more metal work. You can see light coming through the rear trunk area because the whole section has been completely cut out. A fiberglass floor will be created to cover the hole and a custom fuel set-up will replace the gas tank that was once there…

Here’s a view of the cage through the area that once had a floor and fuel tank…

The grinded-down rear subframe…

There really isn’t a time frame for when the car will be finished since he only works on it when he has time but we are all pretty excited to see the end result. If it looks anything like his old EG6, this will be a good one…

This EK4 SiR is a customer car that is currently at the shop for some work. I believe it is getting caged among other things. Probably some work in the engine bay too…

It was raining heavily outside but I walked outside to get a quick shot of Yasu’s HKS GT-Supercharged S2000 engine bay…

Some of the awards that they earned from last year’s Wekfest Japan event in Nagoya…

Pie-cut titanium welded exhaust pipe sample upstairs in their showroom area. Next to it is a stainless sample…

Tactical Art also carries the full catalog of Rywire products, including their new tucked radiator kit…

Tactical Art coilovers  which should be available here in the U.S. pretty soon…

It was pretty cold downstairs so Yuri huddled-up against a portable heater to stay warm…

One of the great moments that we were lucky to be there for was seeing Chibichan’s reaction to seeing his Ferio for the first time. He doesn’t live very close to Tactical Art so he hadn’t seen his car yet since they had finished the swap and all the repairs. It was awesome to see his reaction and to see how excited he was about the finished product. It has been a long road to get this car back in running condition but it was definitely worth the wait….

On that note, this concludes our post for today. There is still a ton of great stuff to come so please make sure to stay tuned in for all the updates. Thanks for looking!….