Well, this is it…the epic conclusion to our almost two-week long trip to Japan. Tokyo was amazing, Osaka even better, and I look forward to returning in a few months for Wekfest Japan. Hopefully you saw the update last night with the final vlog in this series. If not, I’ve included it at the end of this post. Today, we pick up where the last post left off with the rest of the photos from our final days in Japan. There’s lots of food as always but wedged in-between is a mini-featurette on Phaze2 Sasaki’s custom Ferio. Enjoy…

Yakiniku or Japanese BBQ is one of our favorite thing to eat in Japan so we made sure to get a big group of friends together to eat dinner at this place called “Mitsuru”…

Jonathan and our resident French Japanese friend JC from Work Wheels Japan….

Robert taking in smoke before he inhales JBBQ meat smoke…

Random fact but Mitsuru also translates to “3-2-6” phonetically so when people say 326Power (the Japanese brand), what they actually are trying to say is “Mitsuru Power”…

Huge plate of one of my favorite Japanese dishes… Gyūtan (牛タン) aka Grilled Japanese Beef Tongue…

Beef tongue is both delicious and very easy to cook being that it is sliced so thinly. You literally just put it on a hot grill for a couple seconds, do one flip to sear the other side, and boom, ready to consume!…

JC trying to make some French tongue which was both strange and mildly homoerotic…

JBBQ only offers the most premium cuts of beef…it is expensive and not All-You-Can-Eat, but still totally worth it…

We were surprised that they offered Yukke or Minced Beef Sashimi being that it was illegal last year. It is a delicacy and has to be prepared in a very safe and specific way, otherwise it can be deadly. It became illegal last year because 7 people died from eating it in a specific region of Japan. I guess the ban was lifted and it is being offered again. A month later I’m still alive so I guess this place prepped it correctly… *fingers crossed*….

Yukke is one of Der’s favorite dishes. He is probably the most daring of all of us as eaters but he is also prone to death if he eats shellfish so all I can do is tell him about it and hope that he somehow understands how great shellfish is and how he’ll never know the true deliciousness of it…

Some Harami or Japanese steak meat on the grill….

The fat content of the beef made for some pretty epic flames…

Makes me hungry just seeing it again in photos….

Giant slab of thinly cut flank meat….

At one point in the night things got pretty sketchy with the fire blazing but Hiro got it under control…his hair smelled like hot beef for weeks after but you have to make sacrifices when you eat Yakiniku…

We tossed some ice on the grill to cool it down…

Hiro all smiles as usual for “Stupid Time” as he likes to call it… #alwaysstupidtime

If you remember watching the last vlog post, you’ll notice that we stopped by the Osaka Aquarium for some underwater exploration. I didn’t cover it in photos since we were just there for fun but I did manage to get some shots of Tomoyuki Sasaki’s Ferio, which he drove down to the Aquarium that night….

If you are a long-time reader of The Chronicles, you’ll remember seeing his build come together over the last two years. CLICK HERE for a reminder. This car was actually once a slammed EK Ferio which he later converted to this Kouki Ferio VTi. The front and rear end were converted thanks to a donor car and then it was repainted inside and out…

Everything was done in house at Tactical Art except for the orange exterior paint which was done at a local body shop…

It is one of the cleanest Honda builds you will find in Japan and also one of the most updated to resemble modern-day USDM builds from the West side of the U.S. albeit with some recognizable Tactical Art flair…

Engine bay executed to near perfection with a tucked B16A set-up with a host of USDM parts mixed in with Tactical Art fabricated pieces like the air intake. As always, the engine bay is coated in their special “Tactical Art Grey”…

The interior is gutted but the door panels, console, and dashboard remain…

The entire car is caged with all the metal work done by Atsuki of Tactical Art….

A look at the rear section of the cage….

The rear deck was chopped and in its place is a section of dimple-died metal to reinforce the area…

A huge punched plate joins the cage with the B-pillar of the Ferio…

Gusseted-metal strengthening the cross-section of the rear cage…

A custom metal plate covers up a section of the dashboard that was cut for the cage to run through it…

Aggressive CCW wheels which will soon be replaced with a newer set wrapped with beefier rubber…

Can’t wait to see Sasaki’s EK Ferio and Chibichan’s EG Ferio together again at Wekfest Japan…

After our Aquarium adventures, it was off for one final dinner in Osaka at one of the city’s most-popular spots, Kin No Buta… This was one of the rare times where we ate at a All-You-Can-Eat establishment and boy, let me tell you, we took FULL advantage of it, haha…

Unlike more typical Shabu Shabu places that offer only traditional Kombu as a soup base, Kin No Buta offered a variety of different broths. We got a spicy broth on one side and on the other, a broth which didn’t taste like anything that we just kind of didn’t really use….

The meat stacks were coming all night and our goal was to consume 100 plates of beef. Each plate offered two big slices of beef so 100 equaled to 200 slices of meat… It was a big task but we had Robert with us, who has Infinity Stomach, so we had little fear… Getting on a plate the next day made this whole meal sound like a bad idea but we like to live dangerously….

Salem aka Fucking Salem….beanie at all times even in a hot Shabu establishment…

The broth was so hot that you just had to dip the raw meat slices into it for a couple of seconds for it to cook…

We started out on a good roll eating plate after plate but an hour into it, it started to wear on us heavily…

Instead of the waiters taking the plates away, we decided to stack the plates up in the middle to document our meat-consuming adventure…

I’m not going to lie, after I came home to the U.S., I wanted nothing to do with Shabu or meat in general but I have since come around and am down to eat beef again…

With the plates stacking up, we all knew at some point that we wouldn’t be able to see Yasu anymore since he would be hidden behind the plates…

Atsuki from Tactical Art…

As the plate stack grew, or stomachs became smaller….Luckily many of us remained in good spirits…

Sasaki was ill-prepared for the mission and struggled mightily towards the end…

Robert would shit hot beef for a solid month after and, up until this moment, is still residing in the bathroom…

Ultimately, we stopped at 90 or so plates. 100 seemed like a good idea at the time but toilets worldwide would know fear after this meal…

The Chronicles Vlog #4 (Part 10/10): The Finale ft. J’s Racing and Extra Content From Osaka…

And so wraps the end of our 11-day journey in Japan. It was an amazing and incredible experience that I will probably remember for the rest of my life. Once again,thanks to everyone for looking and to all of our friends, old and new, who participated in our adventures. I’m happy to know that I have great people in my life and always appreciative that we can share precious memories together. THANK YOU.