Beer Baron's Japan Photo Diary

[Beer Baron]

Ok Guys,

Time to kick this section off. And I have been promising to re-order and upload photos from the last few years of Japan trips.

These pics will all be here:

Tokyo Autosalon 2005

Tokyo Autosalon 2006

Tokyo Autosalon 2007

Super GT (aka JGTC) Final Battle - Fuji Speedway Nov 2006

Fuji Speedway time attack event (short circuit) Jan 2006

Various Daikoku visits (including an Immortal GTR Owners Club meeting)

Some street drifting pics X 3 (poor quality night pics )

some togue drifting pics (same qual as above )

some wangan pics

Various Osaka attractions pics (Osaka castle etc)

Miyajima pics

Kyoto pics

Various tokyo attractions pics (Tokyo street scenes, tokyo tower, meiji jingu-mae, harajuku, omote sando, ginza, Ueno, Roppongi, food, friends etc)

Various tuning shop pics (Border Racing, Veilside, Top Secret, Nismo Omori etc)

Some other random pics = people, food, funny japanese stuff

Now this task will take a fair while. I have a lot of pics and it will take some time to order them, and add the coments etc to give some background to the pics. so please be patient.

Arigato Gozaimasu.

[ABuSD]

Looking forward to the pics Mr Baron!!

[Beer Baron]

ok, I'm going to get off my lazy, lazy butt and get some up.

Starting with one of my favourites. This photo was taken by me in early 2007 on the togue at Tsukuba mountain. It's an awesome place. At this moment it's freezing cold (so cold I'm shaking half the time). but it's a beautiful clear night and all you can hear is up to 30 cars screaming up and down the mountain. It's insane you can hear them coming long before you see them. My friends and I are standing on the inside of one of the long sweepers on the inside of the corner. Worryingly for me there is no guard rail between me and the cars and they are entering here in 3rd and 4th gear with I'd estimate somewhere around 140kph road speed. The next corner down the hill is where the main 'gallery' is with probably 50 spectators watching from behind the safety of the guard rail on the outside of the corner. I'm shocked that so many people trek out here as it's a good few hours drive out of tokyo and it's the middle of no where. It was hard for me to get pics as I didn't want to seem like a knob with the constant flash photography blinding drivers trying to stay on a narrow piece of road so I only got a couple. One of my favourite nights out from all the japan trips.

pic 1 (the downhill).

[Beer Baron]

here is the other side of the drift coin. a sort of wannabe tokyo drifter doing a burnout in a rest stop on the wangan. he then tried some little drifts around the parking area much to the horror of my friends who's Top Secret built R34 GTR was parked there.

[Beer Baron]

Ok this post is all 2007 Tokyo Auto Salon pics. I will edit it and add more pics as I go along.

one of my favourites. the URAS GT kit on a 180sx. very nice.

[Beer Baron]

ok, this next set is from a big day at Fuji Speedway. There were two events on this day. A drift event on the drift course and a time attack (run in part by Garage Saurus) on the circuit.

Fuji-san. Such a great sight.

One of my favourite 32 GTRs. I was lucky enough to have a good chat to the owner about this car and it's certainly pretty special. It runs 9.2s at the circuit and is a registered and street driven car (I actually drove back with him on the freeway). He wouldn't tell me his circuit times, but it looked bloody quick. It has lots of nice touches such as the custom one-off panasport G7s. The rears are 18X11.5 running 315/30/18 Pirelli semi slicks!!! ouch. Other little touches are the HKS T51R which was custom modified by Saurus. Big endless brakes and all the good gear. It's is such a fine car. and the owner was very friendly and modest too. But I would say his car was wearing the number 1 for a reason, and it's probably not because he was first in with the entry form....

Now some other cars at the time attack:

Crazy R33. This one had a massive wing support under the rear boot lid basically connecting the rear wing to the chassis. Very cool.

another white 32. this one a little tamer with a T04Z instead of the T51 in the other white 32. That's if you can call a T04Z tame...

I dunno why but I quite liked this S14. It was very quick too.

a shitload of cool cars at this event.

yet another very nice Saurus GTR.

GTR up the inside... noice.

34 GTT looked pretty cool too.

one of my favourite was the little doer. He was not afraid to play even though he didn't have a fancy pants GTR. This GTST was pretty sweet though. Brembo brakes, nice rims, lots of gauges and no doubt some good suspension and engine bits too. The owner was baffled as to why I had walked away from all the hard core cars in the garages to come and take photos of his GTST. until I told him I had one too.

[Rezz]

Way to go Richard

[Beer Baron]

Ok here are some pics of how some people live in tokyo. This is the appartment of my friend. I stay there when he is over here in sydney. It's in Azabu which is adjascent to Roppongi and just near Ebisu. Excellent location except that it's down the street from the russian embasy which means every bloody weekend Japanese Nationalists come and protest and the riot police close down the street. The protestors come in their black vans and have the most insanely loud megaphones which is not the best thing to wake you up whilst you are sleeping off the night before. It freaked me out the first time as I had NFI what was going on. They are protesting about a small island to the north of japan. It is currently part of Russia but the Japanese nationalists want it returned to japan. they are most un-happy it seems.

This pic is taken from the bedroom balcony so you can see how close they are. You can see the police have a special little concertina road block and they have a van with a look-out on top. When he sees them coming he gives the signal and they close the road. On the left just out of the picture is a small bus packed full of riot police just sitting there waiting for things to jump off. It must take a lot of cash as the police are there every day.

here they are at the ready:

This is the appartment.

this is the kitchen and lounge room. I am standing just near the door to the lounge room balcony (it's behind me). to my right is the plasma, to the left the couch. then kitchen, down the hall the first door on the left is the toilet room (just sink and toilet) opposite it is the door to the bathroom (very big, has shower and bath and seperate vanity unit). Then next door on the left is entry door. On the right is a little alcove with washer/dryer and the door to the bedroom which also has a balcony.

view from the lounge room balcony.

Day time view. Looking at Roppongi. The big building is the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower.

the lobby. Everything is state of the art of course...

even has a fancy name.

[Beer Baron]

saving this spot for more 2007 pics.

[Beer Baron]

and this one.

[Beer Baron]

and this one.

[Beer Baron]

last one. don't worry, if no pics go in here I can easily remove these posts.

[Beer Baron]

ok, now since we are working backwards through time. I'm moving on to November 2006. Starting with one cool pic of some Japanese race fans out for the final round of the 2006 Super GT (fka JGTC). How hardcore is that! poor dog, he had to put up with every girl walking past, giggly and exlaiming in their best cartoon style voice! Kawaii ne!!! It was cool how laid back everyone was though. where else would you be allowed to take a dog to the race track?

[Kaido_RR]

COOL awesome pix

[akeenan]

that last pic sums up japan for me without using any words.

[Beer Baron]

that last pic sums up japan for me without using any words.

it's one of my favourites. A very modern japanese scene if you like. You can see the guy is drinking a beer too and eating some snacks. Lot's of people around, no one causing any problems or acting like a wanker. everyone is there to watch some racing and have fun. and there are no stupid laws like we have at race tracks (and everywhere else for that matter) as they are not neccessary in japan because people behave over there and use common sense (mostly!).

[geno8r]

awesome, nice posts!

[West]

Please keep them coming, thanks.

[djr81]

it's one of my favourites. A very modern japanese scene if you like. You can see the guy is drinking a beer too and eating some snacks. Lot's of people around, no one causing any problems or acting like a wanker. everyone is there to watch some racing and have fun. and there are no stupid laws like we have at race tracks (and everywhere else for that matter) as they are not neccessary in japan because people behave over there and use common sense (mostly!).

Good call Baron. I tend to think that people over here, by & large, do the same. Just that the organisers of just about everything are reduced to such a state of paranoia that the subsequent regulations pretty much take the fun out of what otherwise would be a relaxing day.

[dead32]

i realy like all of the photo's make's me want to see japan for more then just the car's. p.s the night sky is awsum!