Tag Archive for ‘Mugen’

Wekfest Japan 2022 Coverage… Part 3…

Wekfest Japan 2022 Coverage… Part 3…

As I found myself going over the photos I shot from my visit to Top Fuel late last night, I decided that I would wake-up, eat lunch, and head to the office to get the final portion of this Wekfest Japan coverage up. I know for many of the Japanese, this coverage comes a little later than expected but hey, let’s just say we are saving the best for last, okay? Lol. As if these photos would be the finishing touches on yet another great year of this event. It’s a shame that I missed last year’s show, since it was the only one that I’ve missed since we started doing this back in 2014, but I’m glad a lot of the spectacular car builds returned from the 2021 event so I could see them…

Wekfest Japan 2022 Coverage… Part 2…

Wekfest Japan 2022 Coverage… Part 2…

Welcome back everyone! It looks like there has been an influx of new viewers and visitors coming in from who knows where. For all the new people, thanks for visiting and I hope you stay awhile. I think this most recent Japan trip has brought a completely new audience to the site and to my socials, which is always cool to see. I never expect it, but I think people just like seeing car content from Japan. And being that I was probably one of the first foreigners to make my way back there since the world shut down, it makes perfect sense. Today, we’re going to be taking a look at some pretty impressive builds from the inside of the Port Messe venue in Nagoya. In year’s past, I think I didn’t shoot as much as I would inside due to the low-light but it’s one of the best-looking natural-light venues I’ve ever seen. I just had more fun shooting outside when a lot of the cars were in motion or not arranged so strategically. But this year, I made more of an effort to collect photos from inside because this is the final year Wekfest will be held here…

Wekfest Japan 2022 Coverage… Part 1…

Wekfest Japan 2022 Coverage… Part 1…

Now that all the videos are done and 14 different episodes are up on YouTube, I can FINALLY get to the photos I shot while I was in Japan for a month! I love making videos but there’s nothing I enjoy more than shooting photos. I mean, photo content is a mainstay here on The Chronicles but I opted to release Vlog episodes first because I just don’t enjoy editing photos on my laptop. The colors are just so different than what I’m used to here at home on my desktop and I’m also spoiled with this giant monitor I have in my office. It just wouldn’t be doing my photography work justice if I did everything off of my laptop. Not many will notice but even the Vlogs are slightly different compared to the ones I create at home…

The Finale Of My Adventures In Japan…

The Finale Of My Adventures In Japan…

A month and a day in Japan. It’s time for me to go home to Los Angeles. It’s been fun but the summer is coming and Japan is not the place to be during those months. We pick up this final episode right where the last one left-off at the Chan-Oka Honda Meet. There were still many cars to go over and I provide some insight on how I feel about West Coast Honda style/culture being translated to Japanese Honda builds. After the meet, I head to the parking lot to give you guys a look at one of the coolest Mini builds ever before heading over to “Built By Legends”. There, we get an in-depth look at their ongoing Spoon Sports concept EG6 Civic build and try to understand what the whole purpose of the project is for…

You Won’t Believe What We Found At Top Fuel Japan…

You Won’t Believe What We Found At Top Fuel Japan…

This one might be one of my favorite episodes yet! Just based purely on all the stuff I unexpectedly found while in the Mie prefecture. First we visit one of my all-time favorite shops for the first time ever, Top Fuel in Matsuzaka. I honestly didn’t know what to expect when we arrived, thinking that Top Fuel had shifted their focus to other cars and hadn’t placed much focus on Hondas anymore. I thought it would just be a empty shop with a bunch of Suzuki Swifts being worked on but boy was I wrong!! After that we stopped by Voltex in Suzuka for a visit which was also very cool because neither Yasu nor I had ever been. This area is so rich in tuning history that there was so many surprises. Wait until the very end, it’s a wild one! You’re gonna love it!

Wekfest Austin 2021 Coverage…

Wekfest Austin 2021 Coverage…

There is much that could be said about the Texas Wekfest event this year. I think privately some enthusiasts who attended were a little upset by some of the criticisms that were passed-on during the awards ceremony, at least that’s what I heard from people anyway, but nothing was said to deliberately hurt feelings. These things were said with good intentions because we want this region to flourish like it has in the past. I think there might just be a generational gap or something where social media has mislead some enthusiasts into thinking that only certain things are important when it comes to creating good car builds. Perhaps they haven’t been presented with proper examples to help guide them in the right direction. Or maybe people just stopped caring? I don’t know. It’s a bit of a mystery to me….

There’s A CR-X Inside This Fancy House… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #29

There’s A CR-X Inside This Fancy House… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #29

As we begin to approach the end of 2021, things definitely haven’t slowed down during the holiday season and I found myself in Austin, Texas for the final stop of the Wekfest tour. We take a quick tour of some of the more notable cars there and when I got back home, I was invited by Ryan Basseri from Rywire to check-out a private unveiling of a new CR-X build he had been working on. The unique thing about this particular reveal was that it was actually held inside of his house that he had just finished renovating recently! One of his dreams had always been to have a space inside his house to display a car but we never thought that he would actually do it!!

Wekfest San Jose 2021 Coverage… Part 2…

Wekfest San Jose 2021 Coverage… Part 2…

I am currently sitting on a kitchen counter top in Austin, Texas as I type out this concluding portion of the San Jose Wekfest coverage. It’s about 9PM Texas time and we just wrapped-up dinner at the AirBnb house we are staying at, just a couple days away from the last Wekfest show of 2021. It’s been a pretty wild year to say the least. It started out a bit slow, the months dragged on it seemed, but then by mid-summer, things just took-off. Things started to open back up, there seemed to be an endless amount of car meets going on every weekend, and indoor car shows officially resumed. In the past two months, we’ve done three Wekfest events that took us from Seattle, back home to Los Angeles, and to San Jose for the ‘Super Bowl’…

Is This The Best Wekfest San Jose Ever??… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #26

Is This The Best Wekfest San Jose Ever??… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #26

I’ve been on the Wekfest tour for some time now but top to bottom, in terms of car quality, this just might be the best Wekfest event we’ve ever had in North America. Call it luck or good preparation but the variety that this show offered was insane! From Japanese classics to rare super cars and everything in-between, if you loved custom car culture, this was the place to be. Originally I had thought that I had not shot enough video for an entire episode, being that I was so busy running around everywhere, but when I got home, I realized I had a ton of footage. Sometimes I even surprise myself, I guess, lol!