Tag Archive for ‘exceed japan’

Autofashion AF Fest Japan 2023 Photos…

Autofashion AF Fest Japan 2023 Photos…

While I was in Japan back in February, there was a week gap where I didn’t have any other visitors with me. Sara had gone home, Kristian and Der wasn’t set to arrive yet, and there was some free time to just recover. January had been pretty crazy so this was the week where I’d sit down finally can create some content. Creating meant chillin’ inside Yasu’s office at Exceed with the heater blasting while inhaling nonstop second-hand smoke. It’s now April and I can still smell the Seven Stars cigarettes every day, I swear. I put a couple of Vlog episodes together during that time while Yasu caught-up on work at the shop. By the end of the week, it was time for us to resume our adventures and the event I was looking forward to was the AF Fest car show hosted by my friends from Autofashion USA. I’ve known these guys since like 2004-ish so I always appreciate what they do and try to show my support. These guys were doing big things back then and allowed a young scrub like me to tag along and occasionally show my Accord with their fleet of VIP cars. I don’t know why but they me chill with them. Maybe it was a San Diego thing where you just look out for one another, who knows. But it’s been almost 20 years now and I’m happy to say that we are all alive and kicking while still remaining pretty relevant in the scope of the automotive tuning industry. Bascailly, I fuck with these dudes. They’re homies. If they’re doing something or hosting an event, I always try my best to go and every year when I used to do my anniversary meets, the guys from Autofashion would be out to help DJ even though they were dead-tired from building SEMA cars. They are good people and I think their accomplishments translate worldwide because they’ve also created a pretty cool event series in Japan over the last few years. Cool cars, good people, I don’t have to be there all day…that sounds like a fun day to me, lol…

Finally! Some Major Progress On Der’s Civic Build!!…

Finally! Some Major Progress On Der’s Civic Build!!…

It’s been a while but we are back with some major updates! After coming back from Japan, I took some time off just to recover and get back into the swing of things here at home. There wasn’t a whole lot going on so I just stayed lowkey and hung out here at the shop. Before Der met up with me in Japan, he actually was at the shop every weekend working on his Civic. A lot of big changes happened while I was gone so when I came back home, I came back staring at almost a completely different car! Over the last two weekends, we finally started on something that he had been dreading; installing his Safety21 roll cage. The main thing was getting all the parts over the to shop but once we did, Der tore his whole Civic apart again so we could fit the bolt-in cage. I thought it was easy but I also spent most of the afternoons watching sports and only jumped in when he needed a second hand, lol. If you’ve been wanting to see what’s new with Der’s EK, this is the episode you need!

Attack Tsukuba Is Tuning Car Heaven!!…

Attack Tsukuba Is Tuning Car Heaven!!…

Ask any of my friends who have been to Attack Tsukuba before and they’ll tell you with certainty that this is their favorite event in Japan. It’s literally tuning car heaven and everything you could ask for if you’re a Japanese automotive enthusiast. There’s no other place where you can combine some of the fastest cars in the country with the style that we’ve grown-up appreciating. The quality is top-tier and the execution so unique on so many of these competition vehicles. It really needs to be witnessed in-person to truly be appreciated. You just have to be there at the famed Tsukuba Circuit. For those of you who have never been, don’t worry, I’m here to show you guys a little piece of why this event is so interesting. This year, I didn’t have any particular group of people or specific car to follow so my friends and I just tried to consume as much of Attack as we could. Der and Kristian came later on in my trip to Japan this year just so they could go to Attack, they almost didn’t care about seeing anything else—and I showed them all kinds of stuff!

Suzuka Adventures With Top Fuel Japan, Voltex & More!!…

Suzuka Adventures With Top Fuel Japan, Voltex & More!!…

Well, as sad as it may sound, the Osaka portion of our journeys have come to an end. I’m glad it ended the way it did but it was time for us to move back over to the Tokyo-side of Japan. As we approach our final major event at Tsukuba Circuit, we stop by over in the Mie prefecture to pay a visit to Top Fuel. If you watched my videos from my last visit to Japan, I had the opportunity to see Top Fuel for the first time. It was such an epic visit that I made sure to go again so that Der and Kristian could see this place for themselves. After Top Fuel, we made a stop at a local restaurant that we had previously frequented multiple times before. The food was always good considering it’s the only restaurant out in the middle of nowhere. Since the pandemic, however, it’s changed a little bit—to say the least. Eating there was an adventure in itself…

Happy Honda Holidays From Me To You…

Happy Honda Holidays From Me To You…

Seasons greetings everyone! It’s the holiday season and everyone out here seems to be organizing toy drive-themed car events every weekend. It’s all for a good cause so we make sure to show up to as many as we can to give back. It’s also nice just to do car things and see friends of course so why not take advantage of time to do both? First, we stop by the GReddy Food Drive to drop-off some raffle prizes, then we head to our friend Barry Ancheta’s Stay Classick Sleighride event to drop-off some toys and see some good Honda builds!! I think you guys will enjoy this particular episode if you’ve been a subscriber for a long time here. It’ll give you guys a good glimpse of what 2023 holds….better video quality, including 4K resolution! I’m still undecided on whether or not to go full 60 FPS because I enjoy the more cinematic feel of 30 FPS but I’ll leave it up to you guys. Let me know what you guys think!! Oh yeah, and Ryan Der continues to make progress on his Civic project as well. He’s ramping up to finally make some major changes to the car so stay tuned if you enjoy his build thus far…

California Dreamin’ At Wekfest San Jose…

California Dreamin’ At Wekfest San Jose…

With the Battlecraft x Exceed GR86 together now, it was time for me to make the 6-hour drive up to San Jose for the annual Wekfest super show! Not only was I shooting and working the event this year, I also had to make sure to get the GR86 there for display. Our goal was to have this car showcased at the two biggest Wekfest events of the year so it was important for me to get the car to San Jose. The drive itself wasn’t so bad, but it definitely made me remember why I stopped driving so far for shows, lol. Being that it was such a hectic event, I didn’t have too much time to film during the show but I did manage to capture some of what happened behind-the-scenes. After I got back to Los Angeles after the show, I found out that there was another event to attend mid-week so I cleaned-up the GR once again and cruised over!

A NEW Daily And The Battlecraft x Exceed GR86 Build Begins!!…

A NEW Daily And The Battlecraft x Exceed GR86 Build Begins!!…

Well, it’s that time! After collecting parts from Japan the last few months, we finally get to work on the Battlecraft x Exceed GR86 project! The original plan was to get the car done for the Wekfest San Jose event but we were a bit worried about getting the necessary parts from Japan in time. Not many people know this but the GR86 has also been gone for the last few months! Teardown on the car began as soon as we got it back and while that was going on, I was also looking to buy a new daily since my Honda Pilot has been giving me some problems…

Chan-Oka Honda Meet Japan 2022 Coverage… Part 2…

Chan-Oka Honda Meet Japan 2022 Coverage… Part 2…

There’s a lot of things I could elaborate on when it comes to this meet. I could really do a deep-dive into each build, pointing out all the fine details that make it great, or all the minor miscues where they may have missed the mark. But, a simple statement is really all that needs to be said; The Chan-Oka Honda Meet is a love letter to the West Coast Honda community of the 2000s. It is everything this generation of Honda enthusiasts in Japan appreciate about what they saw in all those magazines, all the images on the NWP4Life forums, the Google image searches and now social media. This is them paying homage to us and completing that circle of inspiration because we were the ones originally inspired by the Japanese Honda enthusiasts that came before both them and us. It’s kind of amazing…

Chan-Oka Honda Meet Japan 2022 Coverage… Part 1…

Chan-Oka Honda Meet Japan 2022 Coverage… Part 1…

If I recall, I was perusing Twitter one night a few months ago when I stumbled upon a post with an image I found interesting. I don’t know if you guys are aware, but if you enjoy Japanese tuning, Twitter is actually a great resource for Japanese car content. My friends and I actually refer to it as “Japanese car Twitter”. Instagram is popular worldwide but Twitter is actually VERY popular in Japan. It was likely the first social media outlet other than Facebook that enthusiasts over there used to post car content. If you don’t have Twitter, you should really think about getting on it just for car stuff. Anyways, before I go too far off on a tangent, I was on the Tweeting app one night when I saw a photo of a group of Honda enthusiasts gathered around a box of old magazines. I zoomed in on the image to see what these guys were looking at and it was actually a

Stancenation Japan G Edition Aichi 2022 Coverage… Part 3…

Stancenation Japan G Edition Aichi 2022 Coverage… Part 3…

Well, here we go! Time to wrap-up this coverage on the Stancenation Japan G Edition Aichi event. In the coming days, I’ll have some more event coverage for you guys from Japan as well as the photos that I shot from my shop visits out there. Some of the photos you’ve probably seen already but I actually shot a lot more photos at each different stop. It’s easy to forget about the photos since I will often post up the Vlog episodes first but my bread and butter has always been photos. As such, I would like to have them hosted here on the site for people to see and for enthusiasts to enjoy later down the line when they are searching for content on the web. The last event I have to host here is the Chan-Oka Honda Meet. That one is a multi-part set of photos too and I would really like to get those up before I fly out to Seattle this weekend for the first big U.S. Wekfest event of 2022. Everything is done, I just have to put it all together. Those photos consist of all Honda builds, unlike this last set from Stancenation Aichi. I think there might be only two Hondas in this batch. Everything else is Nissans, Toyotas, and some other unique builds. There was just so much variety at this event that it was hard to just focus on one brand or genre of car. I have no idea when I’ll be able to attend another one of these but I’d definitely love to go back again to enjoy it. It’s legitimately a great automotive event in Japan. Thanks to the people from Stance Magazine for extending the invite…