Is it me you’re looking for?…


Is it me you’re looking for?…

A week before Wekfest San Jose, I had Dave’s Civic sitting here at the shop because we needed to install the new Exceed Version 2 front lip to debut at the show. He’ll be the first one to tell you that his Civic isn’t a ‘show car’ but myself and everyone around him thinks otherwise. It’s such an incredibly well-built car with some many nice detail touches. To us, it’s the perfect choice to run the new Exceed front lip. The Version 2 lip comes on the heels of the discontinuation of the original Exceed lip. It goes without saying, and it might be obvious to some, but the relationship between Exceed and Mode Parfume is now non-existent. The two companies parted ways due mainly to a difference in views and ethics so Yasu set-off to create a new variation of the popular Exceed lip…

I always try to make my way to Type One every time I go back to Japan. In year’s past I’d message Aaron from Spoon Sports USA to see if it was okay if I went over there, worrying we’d get in the way or something. Better to ask than to feel unwelcome, you know? Sometimes Aaron would even be there to show us around. Give us a full tour and show us some stuff the public doesn’t have access to. My friends and I have created some great memories at this place over the past decade. Nowadays I’ll just send a quick message to Jomoto from Spoon to let him know I’m coming by to say ‘hi’, no matter how brief the encounter. It’s one of those things where when you’re in town, you just cruise by to see a friend. It’s crazy to think I can even say that today…

I always try to make my way to Type One every time I go back to Japan. In year’s past I’d message Aaron from Spoon Sports USA to see if it was okay if I went over there, worrying we’d get in the way or something. Better to ask than to feel unwelcome, you know? Sometimes Aaron would even be there to show us around. Give us a full tour and show us some stuff the public doesn’t have access to. My friends and I have created some great memories at this place over the past decade. Nowadays I’ll just send a quick message to Daisuke Jomoto from Spoon to let him know I’m coming by to say ‘hi’, no matter how brief the encounter. It’s one of those things where when you’re in town, you just cruise by to see a friend. It’s crazy to think I can even say that today…

You know, I’d never thought I’d see the day when this Civic coupe would re-emerge over in Japan. It wasn’t the best kept secret ever, but Yasu from Exceed Japan actually purchased this coupe about 5 years ago as a bare shell. DPK David had decided to move on from Hondas and Yasu leaped at the chance of owning it. The two-door was one of Yasu’s favorites from the West Coast and one of the builds that really got him fascinated with how enthusiasts build Hondas in America. He had planned to rebuild the car as an homage to its prime years here in Southern California but with some updated details to make it his own. As the business grew over the years, it became less of a priority to get this thing back together. This year marked the first time Yasu even had a chance to even touch the car and over the last few months, it has started to look like its old self again. After I left Australia, I flew straight to Japan to see it for myself…

After Wekfest Japan and Doridore, we had a day-off to just do regular life, touristy things. Obviously I’ve been to Osaka many, many times but Nana had yet to fully experience what Osaka was all about. So we spent a day just showing her around before waking-up early the following morning to go to Central Circuit. Zerofighter was hosting one of their Honda One-Make races there and it looked to have a pretty solid collective of competition cars. Things get super interesting later in the day when it starts to rain pretty heavily but overall, it was another fun day out in Japan doing car stuff. Enjoy!…

Adobe just released this new AI-based noise reduction feature for their Lightroom program and it is just ridiculous in how good it works. This isn’t even an ad or anything, I just think it’s noteworthy to show you guys. Photos shot with mirror-less camera bodies tend to produce quite a bit of noise, from my experience, but the amount of megapixels nowadays create such large digital images that you don’t really see the noise when the photo is compressed for viewing on say, a smartphone…

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…

Is it too late to post these? Possibly. Should I post them anyway since I spent so much time shooting, editing, and typing up all this content? Possibly. Will I do it even though we are days away from 2023? Yes. So here we go…

When we last left off, myself and the rest of the enthusiasts who had gathered for the Honda Collective were preparing to move to our next stop. The Riverside Drive Overpass was a fantastic location to shoot at but we were all looking forward to see what photos we could get in one of New York City’s most iconic locations; Times Square. I had shot cars there in the past but it was always during the late evenings. We had similar gatherings before whenever Wekfest was in town but it had been a few years since we had done a pre-meet in the city. Those photos always came out pretty epic so I wondered how it would be during the day…