If you've ever gone to Japan, or desire to go there, the Kintetsu international arranged trip (turbo magazine tour) is the best and easiest way to go. One of our other friends had been to Japan before, but stated that this trip was the Japan trip he had always wished he had been on. View the photo summary of our trip below and you can see that we did just about everything you'd want to do as a Japanese car enthusiest in only 5 days!

First, a few pics of Japan, tourist style

You really could spend the majority if your time just sight seeing. These pics were taken from our hotel view (shinagawa prince) and walking around Akihabara. Our room was also pretty cool, although small by US standards.

The Japanese do love their toilets. Ours had a seat warmer, bidet with pressure control, and (lady) parts cleaner. It actually had some horsepower too, cause we tested it for sure.

Ok now the Auto Salon. First cars, then ladies.


Yes, that's a FWD Levin with crazy flares and AE86 offset wheels!

Mitsubishi girls do a song and dance to introduce the new models.

out of all cars goodyear brought, they chose an American car!

Fuji Speedway's drift specific track

Our hosts for the day

We got to ride along with the drivers on the drift course. It was fun for sure! We could pick who we wanted to ride with....

So naturally, I picked her! She's the "queen" of Fuji drift. She's absolutely adorable. I wanted to bring her home with me, but my luggage was full.

She's actually really talented, and could speak english too!

Now for Fuji. We went to lunch but only had an hour, but the line was so long to order, so we skipped lunch and ran to the paddock to snap some photos of the machines there. Let me preface this by saying there wasn't one track beater there. Every car was in pristine condition, and could win a show here in the states. Cars that are show condition that get driven on the track? Win!

The biggest treat? We saw AE86's! This should make you "show" guys depressed, because their cars are nicer than yours and tracked.

The restaurant at the hotel. Wow!

Sinks are lowwwww

Alex Pfeiffer/Ross Petty Hawaiian guy heaven

The Japanese LOVE the american stuff.

Body pillows with your favorite race queen imprinted on it. Now what would you do with that?

Set of 3 GT spec single lug race wheels, about $100 bucks for the set.

17x8.5" dry carbon wheel, weighs approx 7 lbs.

My beer of choice while there. D Sanders sponsored?

Citroen dealership in Tokyo

2.5L Boxer Turbocharged I-4cyl, STI spec

Super Autobacs

Ramen isle at 7-11

The best thing in Japan:

I always wanted to go but never made the effort in doing it.

Can I ask how much was the flight and hotel? And how long did you stay?

Mike

AE85 (20valve Stinger) "it will sting you"
Bisimoto Engineering my best 4age tuner in so cal
noelski08@gmail.com

and I realized it when I saw the pictures of the restaurant

that's the same EXACT hotel I stayed in when I went to Japan! what the heck?!

hope it was tons of fun!

I go to drift day....but I'm sporadic. I even used to staff!

Shinigawa prince hotel right colin?

Anyhow for those of you interested in the tour, its sponsored by turbo magazine but put on by this company called Kintetsu international. You can find the information on their website, and Nitto tires also helped organize the trip and our track day. We got cool jackets!

http://www.kintetsu.com/autosalon/index.html

Its well worth the money. All transportation to and from the events is already arranged, in addition to being allowed to go during the "industry/media" only day. The crowds are far smaller and you can actually shoot photos and buy items with no worry. I myself came back with soooooo much stuff. If you're a japanese car junky or a race fan, this is the absolute best tour for you. Add to the fact that I like Japanese animation, their food, culture and music, and it was heaven for me.

Each day got progressivly better as we were suprised each day with something so awsome we often times wet ourselves. Little things like the book store inside the autobacs, which had every car enthusiests dream collection of DVD's and books. I myself walked away with a 3-disc set of a history of group B rally cars, a best motoring featuring a compillation of all their rally stories, a BMW M magazine (my new fettish) a few issues of a magzine called "racing on!" which has detailed photos of le mans cars, touring cars and the like (also includes dvd) as well as a JGTC video history, from 1994-2006 on DVD. Add to the fact that the following day we ended up a Fuji speedway (for those of you that don't know, its the new formula 1 track for the japan round) and since my friends and I are all motorsports and track junkies, it truly was heaven.

This doesn't even take into consideration the stuff i bought at the auto salon (yes, they even had AE86 parts) and I got to meet the cutest drifter in the world. You'll also meet some really great people (a few stuck up A-holes too, but that's with anything) as speaking with car enthusiests from other parts of the united states was half the fun.

Hope your other friend can post more pictures as well!!

http://www.kintetsu.com/autosalon/price.html

1890 early bird/ 1990 regular
not a bad price AT ALL!!!!!! this is all inclusive!!! negative food!!

i like how the tunnel was rebuilt on this. hm.. maybe we should send John Paul over there to show them how's it's done.

dood, are u stupid? u dont need luggage.

But anyways... I got to go to the Auto Salon this year as I had always dreamed... but I was kind of disappointed... I expected more some how!!!

A guy showing off his new skyline...

just too pretty...

Clean Celica...

FYI, one of your pics you have a 1NZ with big trumpets... Talked to the guys and they said that it did not have an intake manifold, they just put them there for show but not TBs

Almost forgot... Yeah... lots of eye candy...

Anyways just giving a hail up. Tell Your friends HI for me.
Maybe We'll link online.

Aston is RAASFAAS

Modified by RAASFAAS-AE86 at 3:27 PM 2/22/2008

The tour packed the most of everything into the shortest time possible. Scheduled into the tour, we visited the shinto/buddhist temple like you saw, and nights after 6pm were the times they didn't have anything planned. you can always stray away from the tour group whenever you want to, though.

It was my first time in Japan, and I can say I was pretty happy with the amount of stuff I was able to do/see. I mean, I saw three stores with 5 floors of porn, had the best ramen I'd ever had in my life, bought sushi at 7-11 and bought a buddha mask at the temple. We're thinking of going a few days earlier next year, so we can visit some corollla shops.

who are those chicks ?

Going to Singapore on April 27th for the D1 event!