Beer Baron's Japan Photo Diary

[Beer Baron]

Time for a change of pace. Some non-car related pics.

Shibuya Kossaten. Typical of intersections near many busy train stations around Tokyo. Lots of people. They also have the nationalist party vans there screaming out their message. Actually I'm not sure which party/movement the white van is with. They were preaching equality etc, not sure if that includes outsiders though...

Meiji Jingu-mae shrine in Harajuku. One of my favourite places in Tokyo. Every time I go there I leave feeling a million bucks. It is so tranquil and relaxing it's amazing.

The Torii entrance gate. It's huge. When you are standing near it it seems even bigger. It's scale is hard to capture on film.

just a small part of the huge gardens that surround the shrine.

This shot gives a better idea of scale. and as you can see the shrine is very popular, even in late autumn. I can only imagine it must be very busy when the leave change is in full effect.

This is approaching the shrine. On the left and right of pic are the little troughs where you wash your hands and rinse out your mouth before entering the shrine.

It's also a popular place for traditional japanese weddings.

The shrine. Enter, throw some hyaku yen coins into the box, say a prayer, reflect for a moment, then leave.

Looking back from the steps of the shrine towards the courtyard entrance.

Another wedding party. Pretty cool.

Bride and groom.

For those of you who live or work in the city in Sydney you will know there is a guy usually in Pitt St Mall giving out free hugs. well he started something and now it's all over the place. Apparently he has even appeared on Oprah and now copy cats are everywhere, even in japan it seems. These two uni students were trying to share the love on the bridge at Harajuku but not getting many customers.

and yes I did give the dude a hug. and afterwards these two girls wanted to interview me on camera. haha. yes I agreed it was pretty funny, they were so shy it was quite funny to see them battle between their desire to ask questions for the project and their desire to run home!

This is what a fairly empty peak hour train looks like in Tokyo. When it's full on it's much more packed than this. It's quite funny, being 6ft2" I have a completely different view than my japanese friends who can only see the person next to them. Even when packed I can see clean from one end of the train to the other. It's even funnier when I spot another tall foreigner way down the other end. sometimes even 3 carriages away I can see them and give them a smile.

West exit Shinjuku station, looking south.

East exit, Shinjuku station looking east. Big Nova ad is still prominent but I don't know for how long

Yes, this is literally a sea of people I'm standing in! and the big sign in katakana is sakuraya a big camera/electronics store in shinjuku. very good but I prefer yodabashi as I have a point card there which gives you 15% off (kicks ass on 5% duty free that's for sure).

everyone getting ready to make a break for it on the other side of the intersection.

[Beer Baron]

Garage Saurus. Up in my top 3 or 4 favourite japanese tuners. and their orange 32 GTR drag/circuit car is amongst my top 10 GTRs of all time.

The mecca of circuit oriented GTR owners. Saurus do not build show cars, they just build hard core circuit cars, and some drag cars too. but these days their focus is definitely circuit.

You know you are in the right place when this is the kind of machinery parked outside... Hayashi-san's R33 drag car, over 1000ps, hayashi-san's white 32 GTR (completely standard and original), on the other side is his R34 GTR road car packing 1200ps with an RB30 and T51R combo.

The engine bay of the 33.

This is his R34 road car. Who else would want 1200ps for a street car?!?

Hayashi-san was a gracious host as I had made an appointment there. He showed me around the shop (which was huge, even by aus standards) and got their orange 32 GTR out of hiding for me.

This is it, the 2004 Rev Speed Time Attack winner outright. I think it does 55s around Tsukuba. Not bad at all.

Inside is very simple. but the attention to detail is amazing. it's a purpose built race car that looks like it's a show car.

Just being in the workshop was pretty cool.

A customers car was having a roll cage installed whilst I was there. They don't do things by halves. The whole interior was stripped bare so their mechanic could weld up a cage. all window etc removed. I got to see the guy welding and it was damn good.

check out the exhaust collection! Some nice pieces there too.

Work bench and tyre and wheel stock.

The little shop was awesome too. Packed full of lots of hard core parts. Check out the stack of turbos and wastegates near the floor!

Or if you need a beefy clutch they have you covered there too. They were also very proud of their GTR oversize throttle upgrades. They are a big believer in retaining the six throttle set-up and they say their oversize throttles are good for over 1200ps, as they use them on their cars they should know...

The big trophy on the right of the counter is the 2004 Rev Speed Time Attack Trophy.

More hard core bits. Lots of nice suspension.

Another part of the workshop.

A current project. They are building this Ferrari marranello for a customer! he lives in Kyoto and comes up to the Tokyo area to fang around. This thing was hard core considering it's just built for trackdays etc. He must have a lot of coin. It takes a lot of balls and a lot of dough to hack into a ferrari like this.

nice cage

[NYTSKY]

Damn Richard how do you get into these places.

[Nightcrawler]

Simply awesome!

Those neon light inner-city pics remind me of Times Square in NYC

Toyko is on my must-do list - more-so after seeing your brilliant pics! Thanks a heap! Keep them coming!

[Beer Baron]

Damn Richard how do you get into these places.

well I will give out one tip. if you plan to visit any tuning shop and want to see anything more than the front door and the gift shop then you will need to make an appointment and let them know why you are coming (need to come up with a reason here, saying I'm a tourist from australia and just want to look around probably wont thrill them). They will feel a bit put out if you just expect to rock up, look around, use up their time and then not buy anything. If you do buy something or order something decent you will be in for some much nicer treatment for sure.

[NYTSKY]

I just ordered some Tomei pistons!

Not from a workshop though.Will be picking them up while im over there.Saving on shipping,handling and insurance which turned out to be a hell of a saving.

Will i need to worry about tax when taking them out of the country?

[Beer Baron]

nope, wont be a problem. japanese sales tax is only 5% and chances are it's included in the price you are buying them for.

[dead32]

just wanted to say thankyou for bringing us photo's of places where alot of us might never get to see in person.

[Beer Baron]

no problem. I appreciate the thanks, and I'm happy to do it. Sharing memories and experiences I've had in Japan is great fun. The only bad part of the whole thing is the hours I spend uploading all the pics! It takes far longer than I ever would have imagined.

[Gts-t]

just wanted to say thankyou for bringing us photo's of places where alot of us might never get to see in person.

^^ x2

top work BB!

[Nightcrawler]

yeah it is a tough job - but can be made easier.

Firstly get a program like Paint Shop Pro (or any other decent photo manipulation program). (I hear you can find them on some internet thing called Bit Torrent if you wish).

Make a copy of your original photos and batch resize them to the size you want (which it looks like you have already done - but if you batch resize you can do a photo in under a second).

Then open this (resized/copy) photo folder in Paint Shop Pro or equivalent. Open each photo and say 'file' -> 'save as'. In the save box at the bottom there should be an 'options' button. In the new box there will be a drag line for 'compression factor'. When I manipulated one of your photos - the original size was 225kb - when I resaved the pic at a compression factor of 20, the new file size was 84kb. When I upped the compression factor to 30 the new file size was 50kb. Up to 30 I have found there is extremely little if any negative effect on the picture. And for posting photos in low(ish) resolution on the net it is fine. So there you go - I have but your upload time by over 75%.

Now I am not sure if Imageshack has batch uploading or not (I am guessing not), so if not get a decent pic hosting site that has a batch uploader - ie you point it at a directory and it uploads the whole lot. Or even better speak to your ISP about your own personal web space (most people get this free from their ISP and don't even know it) and the ftp your photos to your webspace and direct people to it to look at pics there.

Easy peasy. Hopefully this saves you a ton of time!

[R-sanichi]

Good guesses, pretty close but no cigar. The floating Torii is at the entrance to the floating shrine in Miyajima island (just south of Hiroshima). That 5 story pagoda is in Miyajima too. If you've never been there, it's worth checking out. Listed as one of the 5 most beautiful sights in japan.

oh, and yes, Kyoto was lovely. But to be honest I couldn't spend more than 2 or 3 days there tops. After a while all the shrines and temples begin to look pretty similar. The Kyoto Imperial Palace was awesome though.

Ahh Miajima. Such a nice place. I really miss Hiroshima ken and the city of fu kuyama....　日本はこいしいい！I think I need to spend many more years in Japan.

A great photo diary, its nice you are taking the time to share this with us, Baron san.

Edited January 2, 2008 by R-sanyon

[Beer Baron]

doitashimashite. Mr 34.

I have not spent much time in Hiroshima but it looks lovely, and all serious okonomiyaki eaters know that hiroshima style okonomiyaki kills osaka style. and the best okonomiyaki I've had was in Hiroshima.

[R33 Impul]

Hey Richard

You won't be going anywhere near this Garage Impul by any chance? Would be nice to see some pics of the company responsible for my taxi

Setagaya-ku, 156-0054, Tokyo, 5-32-3 Sakuragaoka

http://www.impul.co.jp/garage/index.htm#Sale_Sus

Wouldn't be interested in grabbing me a new Blast muffler for my R33R would you

[Poida]

Richard, what kinda camera are you using?

[DRD-00F]

Richard...

DOME!

[akeenan]

Hey Richard

You won't be going anywhere near this Garage Impul by any chance? Would be nice to see some pics of the company responsible for my taxi

Setagaya-ku, 156-0054, Tokyo, 5-32-3 Sakuragaoka

hehe thats about 5 minutes by bicycle from my house

[R33PER]

Very good thread, just read all 13 pages

[Beer Baron]

R33 impul: I wont be going to impul any time in the near future, but akeenan may be able to help out?

poida, using a canon 400D (well kiss X actually lol) and canon ef and ef-s lenses.

r33per, glad you enjoyed the thread

[dmac_25]

Hi mate, yes I've been many times now and heading back in 3 weeks time. The first time I went I had a lonely planet Japan guide, and a lonely planet Tokyo guide (and a lonley planet tokyo pocket city guide). all of them had their uses on that first trip. I also have the lonely planet phrase book which is ok too. but after studying japanese now for a few years at sydney uni I haven't used it in a long time. there is another awesome book which I'm trying to track down which is an english book of the rail system maps. this doesn't sound that exciting but there are dozens of rail companies in japan and even in tokyo there is probably half a dozen and lots of different lines, and then the subway too... english rail map is a must, but whilst the JR one is easy to get some others are not always available.

if you are going for the first time, and don't speak much japanese i would take:

lonely planet tokyo

and if you are going outside of tokyo take lonely planet japan too

and a phrase book of some kind.

Thanks Beer Baron just checking out the lastest pics omg i carnt stop looking at them at work and gee the chick with the GTR cap your bloody right very cute the Japanese girls are very cute, all those pics are great carnt wait to go over there just gotta save after i get the gts back together.

How do you get so lucky and get to go over there so much?