Tag Archive for ‘usdm’

Once A Year, Honda Heaven Exists In Saitama…

Once A Year, Honda Heaven Exists In Saitama…

On my last few days in Japan, I head back over to the Tokyo-side of Japan to check-out the 2nd annual “Chan-Oka Honda Meet” in Saitama. This meet is a special one for me because its entire purpose is to pay homage to the USDM West Coast Honda scene of the mid-to-late 2000s. While we spent the better part of our adult lives in America building Hondas inspired by the ones we saw in Japan, younger enthusiasts over there were studying our interpretations of their style. In the last few years, USDM Honda culture and style has developed a pretty big following in Japan. It’s become a style almost unique to itself because its an interpretation of an interpretation. Like if one person tells another person a story, and that person repeats that story to someone else, and so on and on, eventually the story becomes different. It just retains certain elements, or the core pieces, of the original story. That’s basically what the USDM Honda community consists of. It features many of the core ideologies of what we did here, but the execution is slightly different. Some parts are different because accessibility to certain brands are limited and Japan just does things unique from us because culturally, they weren’t raised the same. The Chan-Oka Honda Meet is an important gathering because it represents a big part of where the Honda community in Japan is headed in the next few years. For guys like me who grew-up during the golden age of the West Coast Honda scene, this meet is Heaven on Earth—but like, a Japanese version of Heaven 🙂

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.

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?…