This is the good stuff. I’m serious. If there was a “meat and potatoes” of my Osaka photo coverage…this is the post. Some of my favorite photos ever might actually be in this single post alone and it all just kinda happened by chance. I didn’t plan it, none of these shots were predetermined, I just shot what was happening in front of me and just doing whatever I could to freeze time. We were all just having such a good time in Osaka that I just wanted to see if I could hold onto it somehow and make it last forever. Realistically I just have no idea if we will ever experience these types of moments again with these people, in this environment, so it was important to capture it…

Having Ryan Der on this trip with me really helped to reinvigorate my creativity. Often times I think I can get into a mode where I’m just going through the motions and treating this like it is a job. Being in Japan usually helps me get out of that “auto pilot” mode but seeing Der get so excited about what was going on gave me new energy. We’ve had some great times together in Japan through the years but this trip was definitely one of the best ones that I can remember. Everything just seemingly fell into place. I guess you can say the stars aligned for us and all this great car stuff was just happening around us all at once…

Osaka Auto Messe itself was a three-day event for us from set-up to roll-out. And a few days after the show it felt like we had already seen more than most people would and we weren’t even in Tokyo for Attack Tsukuba yet! Spending three days at the same show sounds like it would get monotonous but there was always something interesting going on that we never even had a chance to get bored. The show and the people involved are just so quirky. I loved it…

Another friend I had with me for the first time in Osaka was Yonas Liu from Australia. You may know Yonas from JDMYARD who came out last year for Attack Tsukuba. He wanted to experience something new this year so he flew to Osaka to see what all the hype was about. When we were in Tokyo last year, Yasu and I were telling him how different Osaka was compared to Tokyo. Hondas and Civics in particular, are treated differently in Osaka and I think that made him interested being a diehard Honda enthusiast himself. Auto Messe had a pretty small gathering of Hondas and since he was only in Japan for a few days, we wanted to squeeze as much Honda culture out of Osaka as we could—so we decided to host a car meet after the second day of the show. I pulled my laptop out, put a quick flyer together to inform the people of Osaka, and shared it online. I really wish I had shot more photos from that evening but I’ve included what I did capture that night within this post. It was a bit dark at the meet and the cars were packed tightly into the parking area but I managed to get some good photos out of it…

The day after our successful night meet was the final day of the Osaka Auto Messe. I spent most of the weekend hanging out and doing mostly video but I really ramped it up with photos for day three. Towards the end of the day I even got to experience the roll-out and shot a bit during the evening. It started raining pretty heavily on the third and final day so many of the exhibitors rushed out of the venue as soon as they could to get their display vehicles back to their respective shops/garages. I’ve never seen a show clear-out so quickly. One minute they were trying to get spectators to leave and at the blink of an eye the convention halls looked like a ghost town. I thought we were gonna just go and grab dinner after we dropped-off some of the NO GOOD RACING cars but boy was I in for a surprise. We head outside, spot Tsuyoshi’s two Civics from NGR on the street, and Yasu tells us that he actually has to drop off his cars at the shop as well.  NO GOOD RACING Civics smashing down the Osaka highway with torrential downpour? YES PLEASE. Of course I’m gonna try to capture that with my camera. I’d be a fool to not take advantage of the opportunity. I’ve been so much more confident with my camera lately that I’ve been willing to try new things to really try to push my dSLR to its limits. I think you’ll see some good results from those risks that I took.

If you missed Part 1, click the link below to view it.

The Style and Nuance of Osaka Auto Messe 2020… Part 1…

There’s some chronology there if you need or want context to what you’re seeing. If you just wanna get to the good stuff, scroll past the link and get right too the meat and potatoes…

Before we begin, I’d just like to give a huge thanks to the NO GOOD RACING Family, Yasu from Exceed, Masao from Mode Parfume, Chiba from X-Point, and everyone else who was so courteous during our visit. Having these people around is what makes these trips worth it!…

After I spent a few minutes going through the full Junction Produce G50 President that you saw at the end of the previous post, I walked over to this beautifully built Toyota Aristo from Exchange Car Shop. The body has been widened and radiused, the aero looks custom, and the entire car has been resprayed in this pewter tone…

Here you can see how the widened rear quarters can house these deep, step-lipped Work Meister M1 wheels…

Full custom interior inside the Aristo redone with white vinyl and red suede. The plastic trim pieces in the dash are painted to match the suede and the MOMO steering has also been reupholstered…

Recaro SR3 seats reupholstered as well to match along with the two-tone headliner and center console with the “Exchange” logo stitched in…

Before the second day of Osaka Auto Messe ended, I wanted to get some more shots of the Civics from NO GOOD RACING. This is Tsuyoshi’s Japanese Highway Maintenance-themed EG6 which was once the NGR “Green Shark”. Other new additions since the respray are the white Volk CE38 wheels and the Exceed x Mode Parfume front aero lip…

Love the tagline for Shine Motor: “I SUPPORT ANYTHING WITH AN ENGINE” (SP)…

215/50-15 Yokohama Advan A050 wrapped around classic white Volk CE28N with the sidewalls painted with the Shine Motor logo. I’m glad the Chronicles’ decal suits the theme of the vehicle…

Kentarou’s Red Bull-themed silver EK9 Civic Type R with a carbon Tactical Art front lip and black Volk TE37…

The sideskirts and CTR rear lip have been redone in a high gloss black to match the carbon front lip and TEs. From this angle you can see the rear bumper cut-outs and the LED taillights…

Stoked to see The Chronicles decal together with a NO GOOD RACING one on an actual NGR Civic…

Ryuji from NGR’s Japanese Police Car-themed EF9 Civic SiR complete with an inflatable police woman in the passenger seat and handcuffs…

After day 2 of the show wrapped, we grabbed a quick dinner at Coco Ichibanya and proceeded to the Higashi Parking Area for the Osaka Night Meet we were hosting. It’s been a while since we planned a gathering in Osaka so I didn’t really know what to expect or if people were even going to come. It was so last minute but the good thing about having meets in Osaka is that it usually goes smoother than Tokyo. They’re less strict in this area with car meets and police typically will cruise through the meet a few times but never really cause any disruption. All we had to do was keep everything a bit low key, don’t cause too much trouble, and make sure nobody drives through like a crazy asshole. A few minutes after we pulled-up, cars started to come in to park at whatever spots were available to them. Not long after,  the piercing sound of straight-piped Civics echoed in the distance like a hoard of bees signaling the impending arrival of NO GOOD RACING…

The guys from NGR pulled-up and parked as others continued to drive into the meet…

One of the original Red Bull Civics that we’ve seen before, the other Ryuji from NO GOOD’s freshly painted Red Bull EK, and Tsuyoshi’s BP-themed EF9 SiR…

The EF9 hatch is a car that debuted last year at the Osaka Auto Messe show…

This Red Bull-themed EK was painted just last year around September by Yasu and Exceed. The owner, T.Ryuji also owns the “Blue Shark” EG6 from NO GOOD RACING…

Osaka loves their EF9s and the meet definitely hosted a pretty solid collection of them…

Though it was quite dark inside this parking area, there were just some shots that I envisioned that looked so good that I couldn’t pass them up. Luckily I had my tripod with me but it took multiple attempts to try to capture these moments as people and cars were zooming by…

Yuuki Yoneda’s 20Crown laid-out on BBS wheels was definitely a vibe…

One of the Civics that I’ve been waiting to see since my return trips to Osaka was “Dumbo” from WHARP RACING’s EK. It was one of my favorites when I first starting seeing it online and finally had a chance to see it in-person a couple years ago. Since then, the car has been completely redone with a new livery and all…

What I really wanted to see was how the new Mode Parfume front bumper looked on the car, being that Dumbo was one of the first guys to have one. Not only does he have the new bumper on this Civic, he also owns an extremely clean blue EK with the same face…

The colorway, parts utilized, and how the Civic sits just gives it so much presence. In a sea of other Civics with wild race liveries and TEs, this WHARP RACING build still commands attention…

You have a lot of Civics in Osaka with full graphical liveries and then you have some of your cleaner, more subtle examples like this silver Zenki EK sitting on Sprint Hart CP-R wheels and color-matched EC Works/Five Mart reproduction mirrors…

A couple years ago, I spotted this white EK hatchback inside Speedforme’s body shop over in Sakai. It was all completely torn down and going through a rebuild but what stood-out to me was the “WHITE HAWK” graphic across the rear quarter panel. I didn’t think I’d see it again or really had any idea what it would look like when it was completely but I started seeing it appear on my social media feeds about a year later…

I finally got a chance to see it when it came by the meet and was able to get some cool shots of it with the city in the distance. I’m pretty sure that is a “love hotel” in the background which is a place that you can rent hourly to umm….“spread some love”…lol…

Every now and then a unicorn silver EK9 will appear and when it does, you better make sure to get some photos of it because these are pretty rare to come across…

And that was it for the photos from the meet. I spent a lot of my time trying to capture video of it and if you missed it, you can see that Vlog episode HERE…

The next morning was a damp one. It rained pretty much the entire morning and since the cars had to roll-out of the show in the evening, the parking lot we had to use for exhibitors of the show was this mud pit across the street. Everybody had the park there, even cars like this custom painted Toyota Century on Work Wheels…

Inside, Yayo was still doing her thing at the NO GOOD RACING display but luckily we had some reinforcements. Some of the guys from NO GOOD stepped-in to create a human barrier so the creepers didn’t get too close. They risked old man boners poking at the back of their heads and probably a good amount of open-mouth coughing…

In the Vlog, I showed you guys a car that hadn’t been unveiled yet at the Liberty Walk display and people in the comments were coming up with some pretty wild shit. I think some guy swore it was a blue Ferrari F40. Little did they realize that I actually showed you guys what the car was towards the end of the video, lol. It was this Calsonic-themed Liberty Walk R35 GTR…

I’m not 100% exactly what the back story was on this build but from what I gathered, it was actually based off of an Liberty Walk model car that a 16 year-old kid created. It won a model car competition, I believe, and Kato from Liberty Walk liked it so much that he built a real-life version of it…

So a guy builds a car that inspires a kid to build a model version of it, and then the guy likes it so much that he is inspired to build a real life version of the model the kid made which was originally inspired by said guy. Are you confused yet or is that considered things coming full circle?…

One of the cars that I was finally happy to be able to get some photos of is this one-off Liberty Walk R34 Skyline which is an homage to the DR30 Skyline Super Silhoutte race car. Kato’s new line of aero, the LB-Silhouette Works, is a modern approach to this style of aero so it only made sense for him to debuted an homage to that style but on a chassis that no one would expect…

Even more interesting was that under the hood of this R34 “Silhouette” Skyline was an old dual carb’d Nissan L-Series swap. The original DR30 Super Silhouette was powered by a 570 PS LZ20B engine which is definitely not the same as this, but those are difficult to come by these days and this motor is derived from the same family of engines…

The great thing about Osaka Auto Messe is that it isn’t nearly as crowded as Tokyo Auto Salon so you can actually get clear shots like this whereas in Tokyo, you’d have to be climbing over people or waiting until the very end of the day when the show has ended to capture cars like this…

Speaking of the LB-Silhouette Works line, Kato also debuted this one-off dry carbon fiber Silhouette Works GT kit for the R35 GTR…

An overhead look at the aggressive lines of the Silhouette Works GT kit with its dry carbon aesthetic…

I know people are getting tired of all the widebody craziness but I honestly really like the new LB-Silhouette line. It’s so different than what we’ve been seeing the last five years and it really does have a look all its own. I’m glad they went this route to keep this genre alive…

Not too far away from the Liberty Walk booth was this Ferrari 458 Italia wearing Liberty Walk aero that looks like it could have once been a race car that has since been retired and recreated. Some of the parts on it just look like they’ve been used heavily in competition while the aero looks pretty fresh…

One of the major indications was the center-locking hub and wheel set-up, along with the carbon ceramic brakes which look like they’ve gone through some duty cycles…

The body itself is fresh LB-Works kit just executed in a flat black to contrast the gloss black roof and wheels. The acrylic window and rear hatch also give indication that it was once a race car but I could be wrong and these could just be parts that were purchased second-hand from a race car…

A caricature of Kato from Liberty Walk on their new Jimny build…

Back in the hall where the NO GOOD display was, we took a closer look at the East Ball 240Z done in their signature gray color but wearing a Rocket Bunny widebody kit…

The L-series engine under the hood of the 240Z looked great, though it was still missing an engine harness to get the car fired-up…

The centerpiece of this set-up were the Jenvey individual throttle bodies which eliminate the old carburetors and gives the L-series a more modern direct-injection set-up…

One of the cool things about the NO GOOD RACING booth was that they were actually quite welcoming to families with kids. They allowed the kids to sit inside the cars for the parents to get photos of them and everything. A kind gesture from some of Osaka’s more notorious groups…

I’m sure you guys remember Mori’s Milano Red EK9 CTR from last year’s Wekfest Japan debut. The car hasn’t changed much since then being that Yasu has been so busy with other customer builds but for Osaka Auto Messe, they decided to roll-out the EK9 on a custom set of Desmond Regamaster EVO II wheels…

The turbocharged B16B is the same as you saw it last May but many Osaka car enthusiasts had yet to see this car, so it brought a pretty big crowd throughout the weekend…

For Honda enthusiasts like us from North America, we’re used to seeing engine set-ups like this nowadays but in Japan, it’s pretty rare to have a B-series turbo set-up like this with the dump tubes coming straight out of the front. One of the reasons why Yasu chose to build a Honda like this is because its completely new to most Japanese car guys…

Debuting this year at Auto Messe was the brand new Mode Parfume EG front bumper on this Civic bagged on SSR Formula Aero wheels…

Right next to it was Masa Chiba’s Candy Apple Red EK from X-Point, also wearing the new Mode Parfume front…

I personally like the EG Mode bumper more because I’m just more of an EG6 kind of guy but I’m glad these new aero bumpers are getting so much attention…

Towards the end of the day, we were all getting a little delirious so we had some fun shooting with Yayo. Here’s Der with his Mugen hat on and our friend Masa who came on the last day to hang-out…

I wanted to get one more clean shot of Yayo with the Civics so that the boys could use it for their own socials and I literally had to wait until the very end so we wouldn’t get swarmed…

One last look at the NO GOOD RACING display before it was all torn down…

We moved the NGR EF9 police car out first because it had to go back on a trailer, and then the Shine Motor EG6 drove out, which allowed for this clean look at Kentarou’s silver EK9…

The boys pushed Mori’s EK9 out to the trailer soon after. Again, as mentioned in the beginning, it was pouring rain so everyone was trying to get their cars loaded-up as soon as possible…

The beautiful Works-style S30 on SSR Win Mesh being carefully guided onto a flatbed trailer…

Mori’s Civic Type R being loaded…

I do love Japanese trailers and seeing people load their cars onto them. They just do it so gracefully, lol…

Though it was a fun weekend, it seemed like everyone was excited to get their cars outta there and go home…

The NO GOOD RACING booth came down quickly while we were outside watching cars roll-out…

I’m always happy to see the NO GOOD RACING family so willing to represent The Chronicles on their cars…

Finally at the end we had some space to breathe and shoot…

Before we departed, Ryuji wanted to get everyone together for a group photo. Pretty rare to see so many NGR members in one place. They wanted us in the photos as well so I actually had to prop my camera up on a ladder for this shot. I put that 10-second timer on and ran over to the group hoping my camera didn’t fall off the ladder…

After roll-out, I thought we were just gonna drop off some cars at the shop and go grab dinner but then we ended-up cruising back on the highway with the two Shine Motor Civics from NO GOOD. It was raining so hard by this point but the cars just looked so photogenic, and I was hoping the wet pavement would help give some light to the photos I’d attempt to take…

I guess you can say I was pretty happy with the results considering the conditions…

At first I thought these cars were gonna go onto a trailer but I think Tsuyoshi let someone else borrow his trailer so he just drove his EG6 and had another NGR member drive his EF9…

Advan A050 in the rain on the highway? No problem right?…

The BP livery just pops…

So fitting with the NO GOOD RACING “gun” hand gesture…

Most likely the coolest Japanese Highway Service vehicle you’ll ever see on the highways of Osaka…

I don’t imagine it was a very fun drive with the downpour inside a Civic with a fully gutted interior and likely no climate controls…

Somehow the photos just came out amazing whenever we had any glimpse of light…

At one point I was like “Man, can you imagine seeing something like this on the highway?”, only to immediately realize that I was ACTUALLY seeing this on the highway…

The crazy part was not only their driving, but the fact that my window was completely rolled down and rain water was just spraying into Yasu’s Civic interior. Yonas was sitting right behind me and he had to turn around and shield himself from the rain so I could get these shots…

At one point when we got closer to the city, I just risked it all and stuck my whole arm out of the car with my camera sliding off my wet hand and started firing away in hopes of getting one shot that came out decent with the city as my backdrop. It was all risk, and all reward as I churned out what is likely one of my favorite captures of all time. Everything just worked out perfectly with the distance of the two cars, the lines in the road, the way the city and the rain lit-up the road for me. What a way to close this year’s Osaka Auto Messe…

Hopefully you enjoyed the photos. Thanks for looking as usual and stay tuned because there is so much more coming from my Japan adventures…