Looking for Tokyo Advise!!!

[neergnevets]

hey, im heading over to hiroo, in tokyo for a about a month in late april/may and amped to see some of things ive seen in magazines in videos for years. thing is i speak very little japanese and will be pretty much limited to public transport and maybe the occasional rental car. my bro spent months there and found only an upgarage and a couple of performance car yards so i understand its not easy. So if anybody could give me any directions/tips on where to go, how to get there etc... even if just a point in the right direction id be stoked.

im keen to find some tuning shops, second hand/new parts stores, muesums, tracks, meets whatever... but definetly:

-the redpark nissan muesum place

-crystal/upgarage shops.

-any tips/help on getting to tskuba or any other tracks

-top secret workshop

-any other workshops

-any tips/details of meets in the tokyo/yokohama area

-auction yards or anywhere near tokyo to buy used cars

- plus anything of interest anybody knows

will travel at least a day to get anywhere half cool, time isnt really an issue. also anything that isnt car related would be cool to mention.

thanks in advance for any input, cant wait to get over there and any advise i can get from peoples experiences would make my trip so much better.

over and out,

steve.

[PURE]

hey, im heading over to hiroo, in tokyo for a about a month in late april/may and amped to see some of things ive seen in magazines in videos for years. thing is i speak very little japanese and will be pretty much limited to public transport and maybe the occasional rental car. my bro spent months there and found only an upgarage and a couple of performance car yards so i understand its not easy. So if anybody could give me any directions/tips on where to go, how to get there etc... even if just a point in the right direction id be stoked.  

im keen to find some tuning shops, second hand/new parts stores, muesums, tracks, meets whatever... but definetly:

-the redpark nissan muesum place

-crystal/upgarage shops.

-any tips/help on getting to tskuba or any other tracks

-top secret workshop

-any other workshops

-any tips/details of meets in the tokyo/yokohama area

-auction yards or anywhere near tokyo to buy used cars

- plus anything of interest anybody knows

will travel at least a day to get anywhere half cool, time isnt really an issue. also anything that isnt car related would be cool to mention.  

thanks in advance for any input, cant wait to get over there and any advise i can get from peoples experiences would make my trip so much better.

over and out,  

steve.

I dont know of any good 2nd hand stores.. Check Goo Parts lately? They have ads all the time for various things such as that.

[gekisouzoku]

Hi!

I don't know where all those places are BUT,

If you are going by yourself and you dont speak or read Japanese, or if you don't have a friend in Japan I think you will find it VERY difficult to go somewhere worthwhile! Its not like Australia where you can just pack up and go out for the day, in Japan you need serious planning lol!

Best thing to do is if your going for a Month get a 3 week JR(japan Rail and 3 weeks is the longest u can get) ticket, i think it costs like 300 bucks or something. Otherwise all your money will go on transport. Also if you have not lived in Japan before I would pretty much forget about a hire car - lets just say the Japanese road system is one F@cked up system. They dont have street names either.

You really need someone that can SHOW you where everything is, or someone that can write very detailed maps.

Good places to go other then what you mentioned - Akihabara - electric City- north of tokyo,

Hakone - 2hours south west of tokyo - Drift heaven, Roppongi - West of tokyo - Party City!

I may be heading over in Late April as well, if so I will let you know and perhaps I can show you some places East of Tokyo. My friend owns a dealership over there (He is Japanese) so he knows a lot of choice places! Although there is a larger police presence in that area over the last 2 years to stop drifters and bousou.

Cheers, sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

PS. If you get a Options mag soon as you hit the Japan, and u can read some Jap, then it has some maps to some tune shops, plus it also has addresses of some second hand shops.

[Rezz]

No offense neergnevets, but check out this thread and this thread, and do a search... pretty much everything you've asked has been mentioned before in the Japan section. Cheers.

[DaiOni]

What Rezz said.

But about this comment -

"If you are going by yourself and you dont speak or read Japanese, or if you don't have a friend in Japan I think you will find it VERY difficult to go somewhere worthwhile! Its not like Australia where you can just pack up and go out for the day, in Japan you need serious planning lol!"

nah, not true - some of us have been living in japan for years now with only basic communicative skills. My japanese is atrocious, but I get by. If I can survive rural japan in this way - anyone can survive a short holiday.

[gekisouzoku]

But as you said you have been there for years!

He sounds as though he hasn't been before or talk the language. I'm imagining him stepping of the plane, with no idea where to go or how to get there. It would be a bit overwhelming for someone to just go find everything, especially when most Gaijin can't even use the tokyo area train system! (Its in english fools!)

Best thing is to know someone there, or meet up with someone with the knowledge that you are after.

[DaiOni]

yeah, but I stepped off the plane once too - and I'd never been here before

I think of it this way - if my in-laws can manage to travel from shikoku to my house (off the coast of nw honshu) without any incident or trouble - then anyone can!

IMO, confidence is far more important than language for the first-time traveller in japan. I agree, it can be daunting, but there really isn't much to it. The japanese (99.9%) are very friendly and learn english at school - so you'll always find help if you need it.

One of the easiest things to do, if you're looking for shops in tokyo, is pick up a copy of option 2, show it (a parts shop ad) to the reception of your hotel, and ask for travel advice - common sense and confidence is all you need. (there's also lots of good advice and directions here and at the pf forum)

I'm not discounting the importance of language though - the more you know, the more you'll get out of any foriegn country. The best advice I can offer, is learn katakana - it takes bugger all time to do - and for shopping, it's invaluable.

[PURE]

BTW, if u need a place to stay the youth hostell at iidabashi is top notch.

[neergnevets]

thanks guys, everyone keeps telling me how hard it is to get around, guess its starting to sink in but i wont comprehend it till i arrive. im staying with my old man and his wife over there, he has a car with sat nav where you put in the phone number to direct you. though im told it takes forever to get anywhere and costs a fortune in tolls. guess ill just see how i go and post some pics of my adventure for those of you in my boat now.

[gekisouzoku]

Your home and hosed if you got your old man living over there! Especially if his wife is Japanese! Check out the links page for some more tips anyway !

Take a trip to Hakone and get some pics of the may skid marks!

Cheers.

[PURE]

Go see some sakura blossoms if they are blooming.

[Blitz]

neergnevets, the group of us that went over spoken zero japanese and had no trouble getting around. We werent exactly confident travellers either!

The rail system signage in english is a big help and we found the willingness of the japanese people to give directions or assistance where possible was a huge help.

Regarding Top Secret and crystal, I can give you exact directions to get there - we had vauge information from friends who had been before, but in actual fact we picked up an option magazine which had the address and map of both stores. The reception girl at our hotel happily wrote out the instructions for us.

[sewid]

Up Garage sell second hand parts.

Hiring a car in Japan is a great way to get around the places where train travel is hard, all rental cars come with satellite navigation these days in Japan. Even my cheapest-you-can-get Nissan Rent-a-car March had Sat-Nav and it makes it so easy to get places. You need to read Japanese to use it though. So for you, trains are pretty much it.

The JR pass is by far the best way to do it. A two week ordinary JR pass cost me $565 AUD and it saved me about $500AUD on trains in just two weeks. Thats right i wouldve spent about $1000AUD on trains if i didnt have the pass! $700 of that was Shinkansen but the rest was just train commutes to and from places in/around Tokyo.

[Demon Dave]

You need to read Japanese to use it though.

Being able to read some Japanese is ideal, but you can get by without it. Most satnav systems are pretty intuitive to use and most allow you to simply input the telephone number of the place you want to go to (instead of searching the database or typing in an address).

It's also likely that someone at the rental place (especially in the Narita/tokyo area) will speak enough English to give you a basic idea of how it works...hell if me dad could work out how to use a Jap satnav anyone can! :)