Tag Archive for ‘car meets’

In Kansai, CIVIC IS CULTURE.

In Kansai, CIVIC IS CULTURE.

We’ve been taking you any and everywhere the last few episodes because there was so much going on during the Japanese “Golden Week” vacation period. It seemed like there was something going on every single day because people are just happy to be out and about again. But…in this episode, we get back down to business covering what we’ve come to be known for…All things in Japan, in the Kansai region specifically, related to ’90s era Honda Civics. The weekend of Golden Week, we were invited out to see the JJ Cup event at Central Circuit in Hyogo featuring a one-make style competition of time attack Civics. I do a track walkthrough of the event, show you guys some of the grittiest Hondas that this area has to offer. A day before that however, I stop by to make a shop visit to Charge in Osaka and also stop by to visit our friends at Mecha-Dock for a good old Golden Week BBQ!…
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Wekfest Chicago 2022 Coverage… Part 1…

Wekfest Chicago 2022 Coverage… Part 1…

Attention, attention, we are now interrupting what seems like regularly scheduled posts from Japan to give you some photos I’ve long been waiting to post. As most of you will have realized by now, I am currently in Osaka, Japan. I have so much content to upload as I have been making Vlog episodes basically real-time that I haven’t had much time to post anything else. Right before I left for Osaka, I had literally crammed two nights into completing these photos from Wekfest Chicago only to have them sit on my hard drive for another two weeks, lol. There’s just been so much cool shit happening on this sound of the pond that I haven’t been able to sit down to lay out this post. It’s a shame because I really enjoyed how these photos came out…
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Why You Should Go To An Itasha-Style Car Show In Japan…

Why You Should Go To An Itasha-Style Car Show In Japan…

When I first landed in Osaka, Yasu mentioned that there was an Itasha-style car show happening just two days after Wekfest—at the exact same venue in Nagoya. He asked me if I wanted to go and I thought about it for a whole 2 seconds before I said “YES DEFINITELY”, lol. Why? Well, I’m here in this country that I haven’t been back to in two years so I want to experience as much as possible. More importantly, I want to see and experience NEW things that I haven’t had access to before. Itasha-style car builds are SUPER popular here in Japan and from the photos I’ve seen on Twitter, they always look to be of pretty high-quality as well. SO OF COURSE I WANTED TO GO. And if you watch this episode, you might want to go too! I think everyone experiencing car culture in Japan should try to go to one of these events at least once. Would I go back? Uhhhh….YES.
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A Surprise Appearance At An S2000 Car Meet In Mie Japan!…

A Surprise Appearance At An S2000 Car Meet In Mie Japan!…

The day after Wekfest Japan, we jumped out of bed and into our friend Eishi Suzuki’s Voltex S2000 to attend an all-S2K meet at a parking area in Mie. This was a special occasion because Eishi passed away a couple of years ago and he was once the organizer of this particular meet. His close friend still hosts the meet every year in his honor and Yasu thought it would be a great surprise if we brought his car out for it! I don’t think anyone expected it to be there but everyone was stoked when we pulled-up. The car hasn’t been brought out in public since his passing so it was important that the car be there for the gathering he once hosted…
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One Of The Main Reasons Why I Came Back…WEKFEST JAPAN

One Of The Main Reasons Why I Came Back…WEKFEST JAPAN

As many of you may have figured it out by now, one of the reasons why I returned to Japan in 2022 was to attend the Wekfest event in Nagoya. I’ve been to every single one since the very beginning, with the exception of last year’s due to the global “thing”. It felt weird not coming back, especially since it has long become a regular checkmark on my annual travel calendar. When I found out that there was an opportunity to return, I leaped at the opportunity. This year was a bit different for me. I decided I wanted to experience the show as a spectator and shoot the event for myself. There were so many great builds that I wished there was more time to cover it all, but I had to find a balance between vlogging and photography…so, here is the video portion of my adventures at this Wekfest event…
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GReddy RX S-Roc Skyline Returns, VTEC Club Round 2, and Der’s Civic Update!!… CHRNCLS Vlog 2022

GReddy RX S-Roc Skyline Returns, VTEC Club Round 2, and Der’s Civic Update!!… CHRNCLS Vlog 2022

It’s been awhile but we’re back!! 2022 has started off kinda crazy for us over here. Though we haven’t made a video this year, there is so much going on behind the scenes!! While we are busy planning out the rest of 2022, we provide you guys with some updates on Ryan Der’s Civic build, we meet the legendary GReddy RX S-Roc for the first time, Kenji from GReddy tells us a fantastic story about his history with the S-Roc, and I stop by round 2 of the VTEC Club USA event at Buttonwillow Raceway!!
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Phantom Day 2022 Coverage… Part 2…

Phantom Day 2022 Coverage… Part 2…

Back with the rest of the photos from the recent “Phantom Day” event held in Chiba, Tokyo, Japan. Though this was a smaller event, I can imagine how much fun it would have been to just walk around all day and shoot some of these builds while shooting the shit with my friends over there. Hopefully sooner than later, I’ll be able to do just that when I can head back to Japan. For now, we’ll just have to look at these great photos captured by Yasutaka Shimomukai from Exceed Japan. I’m glad he’s been around me long enough to understand what cars I’d capture and what angles I like to shoot them at. He sends them over to me and I process them the same way I process my own photos. The end result are photos that look just like mine, honestly. Only people that are incredibly familiar with my photography and level of detail will notice the differences.
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Phantom Day 2022 Coverage… Part 1…

Phantom Day 2022 Coverage… Part 1…

Admittedly, I’m a bit bummed because I wasn’t able to attend Tokyo Auto Salon this year due to the ongoing global shitstorm. I thought Yasu was going to go, at least, but I couldn’t even convince him to be inside the Makuhari Messe venue and be exposed to the plethora of possibly infected humans. I knew I was going to miss 2021 because they cancelled the event outright but was looking forward to going back in 2022. This actually marks the first time I’ve ever missed a TAS event since I first started attending back in 2013. From what I heard from friends in Japan, the event was much smaller and the crowd was definitely smaller, which was expected. I think my friends were trying to make me feel better because the show wasn’t nearly as big as it has been in the past but the thought of just being able to shoot the cars there with a smaller crowd sounded amazing. It’s usually pretty impossible to get a clean shot while the show is going on but from what I’ve seen of the photos posted online, you could definitely tell that the show was smaller. I’m hoping Japan re-opens by spring time so I can finally return and visit friends there but at this rate, who really knows?…
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Rywire House and CR-X Reveal…

Rywire House and CR-X Reveal…

The video was posted last week but I thought now would be a good time to actually get the photos up of the recent private event I was invited to where we got to see Aaron Espino’s CR-X unveiled. Unlike most build debuts, this was actually planned to coincide with somewhat of a housewarming party at Ryan from Rywire’s freshly remodeled home in Huntington Beach, California. I remember once upon a time Ryan had these grand plans for this house. It sounded crazy at the time to build a partition inside his home where he would be able to display a car but Ryan is an unconventional type of dude so we all had faith he’d pull it off. And of course, he did. I don’t have all the details on what was all involved with the overhaul of his house but I know it wasn’t particularly easy—and definitely NOT cheap. There was a point when he wasn’t even able to live in the house because everything was torn down and being built from the ground-up. When he told me he was doing this event with Espino’s CR-X parked inside his house, I just had to see it for myself…
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