I’ve always lived under this assumption that I was a spontaneous person and that I just like to “go with the flow”, but maybe I’ve just always been a poor planner. In some ways I think that has helped this site grow to what it is today but I’m not gonna lie, there are times when I think that my organizational skills could use some assistance and I could do a better job of planning things in advance. In my first couple of years going to Japan, everything was very strategic. We had a set plan of what to do, where to go, when to do it, and what time to leave at to make these plans come to fruition. That was not my doing however. Everything was carefully planned because I had Ryan Der to accompany me. Der is one of those guys who will plan everything out way far in advance, even narrowing down spending at times to a budgeted list of who was paying for what and all that good stuff. I myself, well, I don’t do much of that. I’ll try and it will work out for my most of the time, but I can never have that type of focus that Der or some of my other friends have. My biggest move in the last year is starting to put important events and things I need to do down on a schedule—but that’s only because it’s been driving my girlfriend crazy. These last few years, I’ve literally just been going day-to-day after the first few days of my arrival in Tokyo. There’s always the RWB gathering when I arrive and then two days of Tokyo Auto Salon after that. I never go on the third day and somewhere wedged in-between that time, I’ll eat and be a human being. Whatever happens after Tokyo Auto Salon just happens. I’m serious. Most of the stuff you guys see on this site is a product of me just flying by the seat of my pants. I’m just going based on instinct and improvising…

It’s worked for me though.

I don’t get disappointed when plans fall through and I’m typically very surprised by anything I do, lol…

Every helpful in my lifestyle is having friends like Yasu around. He operates in a similar way but I’d say he’s a little better at planning at times. There will be days when we wake up and are just sitting in his car and we’ll be asking one another what we should do that day to maximize my time in Japan. He usually knows what I want to do already and 99% of the time I just want to see car stuff, whether it be going to visit shops or heading to nearby events. You should see how we decided what we eat that day. Most of the time we’ll just throw random phrases at each other that aren’t helpful until one of us makes a decision. It can be frustrating to an outsider I’m sure, but we make it work and the end result are some pretty epic experiences. You know how we helped to bring eyes back onto Kanjozoku culture in Osaka? That was a spontaneous decision that almost didn’t even happen! And look where it got us…

This is all said with a purpose of course. I’m not just saying things just to say them or to give you an anecdote about my adventures. The photos you’ll see today are the product of improvisation. Originally, I had planned to stay until the 19th of January because I wanted to attend the Autofashion Festival in Osaka. It was an important event for me because I wanted to support some of my long-time friends who were running an event in Japan and since I was there, why wouldn’t I try to go? While I was in Japan, someone pointed-out to me that the Central Time Attack Challenge series was having an event near Osaka that same day. CTAC sounds pretty awesome, especially since it was relatively close to where I was staying but I had already committed to going to the Autofashion Festival and did not want to miss it. A day or so before AF Festival, I was having dinner with Yasu and brought-up that CTAC was the same day. He asked if I wanted to go but I told him it didn’t work schedule-wise since it was in a completely different city. He did some research and told me that it wasn’t actually that far away. If we went to CTAC early enough, we’d still have plenty of time to see all the cars at the Autofashion event, being that it didn’t end until the late afternoon…

A part of me was worried that maybe we were spreading ourselves too thin with time but then I did something few would expect of me—I made a plan! All we had to do was leave the house at around 6:30 AM that morning, drive to Hyogo for CTAC, and then leave at around 11:30 AM to make the 1-hour drive back to Osaka for the Autofashion event. Four hours was plenty at CTAC and the other thing didn’t even until 5, leaving us with about four hours to shoot at the show…

…And then we woke-up at noon and everything was fucked. Haha, I’m just kidding of course. We definitely woke-up on time and everything just worked out seamlessly. We even met up with some friends who were visiting from the States and got them to go to both events as well. I didn’t know how much content I’d be able to collect in the span of those four hours at the track, but looking back at it now, I actually shot a decent amount. The photos came out pretty great too. See for yourself…

Before we do that though, make sure to check out all the previous parts of this series if you haven’t already. Here are the links below if you somehow missed them on the front page…

The Chronicles in Japan 2020 Part 1: Arrival and Tokyo Auto Salon…

The Chronicles in Japan 2020 Part 2: More From TAS…

The Chronicles in Japan 2020 Part 3: Spoon Collection Event…

The Chronicles in Japan 2020 Part 4: Tokyo Nights, Hong Kong Meet, and Factor Racing Service…

The Chronicles in Japan 2020 Part 5: Car Make ACROSS, Trial Tuning Spirit, and Speedforme…

The Chronicles in Japan 2020 Part 6: Impact Magic and TRA Kyoto…

Here is what I saw and photographed at the Central Time Attack Challenge in Hyogo…

I honestly had no idea what cars would be at CTAC that day, thinking it would be a field consisting mostly of Civics being we were so close to Osaka, but when I saw the Escort CT9A poking its head out of the paddock, I had a feeling we were in for a treat…

One of the best-looking time attack competitors currently in Japan, the Auto Rescue Izu FD3S RX-7…

One of the mainstays of the current “Attack” race series, piloted by Yasuhiro Ando from Shizuoka…

It’s hard to think of the FD-chassis in Japan and not think of the famed tuning company, RE Amemiya. Underneath all the vinyl and the blue/yellow two-tone livery is a RE GT Championship aero kit, paired with a Voltex Type 16 rear wing…

At one point they were working on the car and popped the hood to reveal the SCOOT-built Rotary engine…

With the TE37SL wheels off the car we can see the massive Endless brakes up front. Tucked tightly behind the front bumper is an oil cooler at the passenger-side…

Always good to see the insanely fast Civics from ASLAN, one of the fastest shops representing Osaka…

We’ve seen a lot of Ton’s EG in the past year but its rare to see both of the ASLAN’s EGs out and about…

The Full Stage RX-7 owned by Hiroyuki Iiri. I believe Iiri also owns Central Circuit, if I heard correctly. Imagine owning a track and getting to test your car whenever you want…

This beautifully assembled green FD was also from Full Stage, wearing an RE Amemiya front. I don’t know why I didn’t take many photos of it since it was one of the best looking cars there, but here’s a quick video I found of the build-up of the car back in 2015:

Great to see it hasn’t changed much since with just more aero additions as of late. It looked like it was having some issues that day so it didn’t run much but when it did, it sounded fantastic…

This Kouki FD2 Civic Type R was just stunning, freshly painted in a dark gray with bolt-on fender flares, J’s Racing front and Voltex rear wing…

Fire Ando getting interviewed before he hops into the Escort Evolution…

I don’t get to see the car often except at these types of events so I always try to give it a thorough look-through. There’s a ton of photos toward the end of all the details since I finally mustered enough courage to walk-up to it while the crew was messing with the car before I left that afternoon…

Just look at that massive rear wing and rear diffuser set-up…

One of the more interesting cars at CTAC was this Daihatsu Coppen race car with wide flares to house the Volk TE37V which you see in the foreground wrapped in 205/50-15 Yokohama Advan A050…

I haven’t come across too many time attack E46 M3 builds during my journeys in Japan so this one was a welcome sight…

It hosts a Voltex rear wing, a custom rear diffuser and a mild front splitter with some canards along with Enkei RS05RR wheels in silver…

After thinking I’d only see Civics all morning, I totally didn’t until I came across this rather simple EG6 with no aero and just a carbon hood for weight reduction…

Inside the engine bay was a B-series set-up with just an intake, header, exhaust, and full-size radiator upgrade…

A glimpse inside revealed just a single Bride race seat, a Cusco cage, and fully-gutted interior…

As it turns out, that EG6 was with these two R35 GTRs from YELLOW DRAGON…

I couldn’t tell you more about YELLOW DRAGON if I tried, but from my searches, I’ve seen a couple of YELLOW DRAGON GTRs being worked on at Endless, a popular tuning shop in Japan and the EG6 appears to have ties with Full Stage…

This white GTR is wearing a full Kansai Service kit with red Volk TE37Ultra…

Fujita Engineering from Osaka brought one of their FD RX-7 democars out, adorned in full FEED Afflux aero and Advan Racing GT…

No crazy swaps under the hood of these RX-7s built by FEED, just your traditional Wankel…

Parked next to it in the garage was another FEED FD…

I found myself going back to look at the FD2 Type R fairly often…

I didn’t get a chance to capture any shots of the interior but it featured a Mugen roll cage and had reupholstered custom interior from 9010design…

Katsumata EF9 Civic SiR with a vented FRP hood and an otherwise stock body. You can see here that the undercoating of the Civic has been stripped and the body reinforced…

Gutted interior that’s been resprayed in gray with just a single Bride seat, roll cage, stitched-welded body, and a fuel cell mounted inside the spare tire area…

It was a nice surprise to see one of my favorite BMW builds in Japan once again, the ASSIST BMW F82 M4 from Kyoto…

Such a good looking car in Yas Marina Blue with the ASSIST Laptorr front spoiler and Voltex rear wing…

Another of the E46 I spotted earlier on the RS05RR wheels. It was parked with the ASSIST F82 but I’m not sure if it was also from their shop…

YELLOW DRAGON EG6 with some rear bumper cut-outs and a single canister exhaust…

It was at this moment I fully appreciated my improvisation skills which led me to Central Circuit to see and hear these machines in action…

The Auto Rescue Izu FD and Escort CT9A on the grid…

Never thought you’d see a cool Daihatsu Coppen? Well…here it is…

A little bit of everything at CTAC that morning…

Fujita Engineering FD with some beefy Advan Racing TCIII wheels…

When you get an opportunity to get more photos of this amazing machine…

…you take it. It’s difficult to get a bad shot of this thing because it just has so much presence and looks sooooo good…

More of the insanely wide ASLAN Civics…

Check-out that dual exit exhaust set-up…

FF Hondas lined-up on the grid ready for battle…

The Katsumata EF9 finally on the ground with its Enkei RPF1 wheels with Advan rubber…

This Mugen CRX Pro.2 looked so good in blue with mismatched TEs and a set of front canards…

I forgot to mention that the owner of this FD2 is from NO GOOD RACING…

Another of the EG6 from YELLOW DRAGON…

A rear shot of the Hondas on grid…

The driver of the Mugen CR-X getting some air…

The ASSIST F82 out in the sunlight with the Laptorr front face and BBS FI wheels…

So fucking good.

While everyone was eating breakfast, I managed to find some alone time with the K1 Laboratory/White Nuts S2000 race car. I didn’t get a chance to see it on the track but here it was all opened-up for me to get some good shots of it…

V-mounted intercooler set-up on this F-series engine powered by an HKS GT Supercharger…

A closer look at the HKS GT Supercharger unit and the pipe/filter which has been shortened…

The engine bay from a different angle…

First time seeing a big brake kit from Seido-Ya. I wonder if its a new kit they’re testing…

Behind the front brakes were these flexible brake cooling tubes and mounted to the body was what looked to be a Flojet electric water pump…

One more shot of the Seido-Ya Racing Masters brake kit. Interestingly enough, I found the K1 Lab S2000 running 326power springs and Yasu mentioned that it was pretty popular to run those on whatever dampers these guys choose to use on the S2000 chassis…

I didn’t focus on the steering wheel set-up because I wanted you guys to see the sequential shifter and gear box on the K1 Lab S2000…

The front fenders look to be custom but the rear over fenders are J’s Racing pieces…

What made this Coppen stand-out was the custom painted livery from Show-Up, the paint shop more known back in the day for painting the beautiful Signal Auto cars…

The custom front end of the Escort Evolution, driven by Fire Ando…

Tried to get artsy and captured this shot of the front brakes on the CT9A through the vented hood which was resting against the fence…

Also captured the Endless brakes and Voltex front fender…

Really went into my artsy bag for these shots…

The 2.2L 4G63 engine uses a Magnus Motorsport stroker kit, Tomei cams, Garrett turbo, MoTec M800 and much more to help it reset the Suzuka lap record a few weeks after this CTAC event took place…

The new front end of the Team Escort Evolution looks good but from this angle, it looks anything but your traditional CT9A face…

Looking forward to see what it will do at next week’s Attack event at Tsukuba, where it’ll attempt to best their 50.983 second lap time…

Katsumata EF9 back on jackstands as it gets a fresh set of tires. Here you can see the underside of the FRP hood and the B16A engine…

A better look inside the stitch-welded interior with the cage and fuel cell lay-out…

One of my favorite shots of that day since I’m on this “one good shot” idea for 2020…

Another FD2 Civic Type R that was at Central Time Attack Challenge on Advan Racing wheels. This one also looked to have a Mugen roll cage within…

Love this headlight replacement piece with a intake duct integrated into it…

By 11:30 AM, it was time for us to go since we were on a tight schedule and trying to make it back to Osaka for the Autofashion event. We weren’t the only ones leaving though, as one of the Full Stage RX-7s was being loaded onto a flat-bed trailer…

Not sure what the issue was, possibly an issue with the engine, but it looked so good you almost didn’t want to see it loaded on to a trailer…

On my way to the car I spotted this EG9 Ferio from ASLAN looking really aggressive with fender flares, Enkei RPF1 wheels wrapped in meaty Advan Neova tires, Chargespeed front lip and sides….

Right next to Yasu’s FK7 was this Zenki EK9 Civic Type R with widened front fenders and molded-in rear over fenders. Interesting car, for some reason I think I’ve seen it somewhere before…

Anyways, that’s a wrap on the CTAC coverage, thanks for looking!! Stay tuned for more. I got so much shit to post I don’t even have enough time to get it all up, lol…