Architecture

Japan is well known for its amazing architecture, more people and less space leads to some tall buildings, and who says they have to be dull? Take the Umeda Skybuilding for example....

How amazing does this look? The 2 lines coming from the cirlce in the middle are escalators leading to the observation deck, giving a 360 degree panoramic view of Osaka

Random Japan Part 3 - hospitality. The Japanese are known for their hospitality and want to make you feel right at home, so in a Japanese home that means wearing slippers indoors and most hotel rooms have a pair for you to wear, not in my case....

Ive size 13 feet (thats 14 in the USA and 31.5 in Japan) so wearing these slippers wasnt possible..


So I just wore my Vans skateshoes instead, bit more comfortable

Sunline Auto

Its rarely a dull day in Japan. Onto the Shinkansen and further west to Okayama to see Sunline Racing. We had 1st met them at TAS and before we had left Ireland, I had been in contact regarding a visit. Now its time!! I met Piers from the GTR register and he was kind enough to give us a lift there aswell as acting as translator. The 1st thing you see when arriving is their new R35 GTR parked alongside 1 of several Fairlady (350)z's.

Which allows a comparison between the 2, the Z looks tiny beside it.


The latest evolution of their S15, now with a sequential gearbox among other things

The Suzuki Swift GTi from TAS. I really like this car, Sunline make a lot of both styling and performance parts for them. I may consider buying 1 some day and tune it a bit like this, maybe using all of Sunlines parts also


Apparantley its rare for Sato San, the owner of Sunline to speak to or even acknowledge visitors, being the workoholic that he is but he took 20 mins of his time to talk with myself and Chris about the new R35 GTR and the tuning scene in general. He has a good philosophy,and an amazing attention to detail - always offer the best available and dont cut corners as failures will occur aswell as creating a bad image. If it means paying for a good quality part so be it. Whats the point of saving €200 when it will cost €2000 to fix what your cost cutting caused....

Quality is important too, take the 350Z to the left, the TAS demo car...

The front bumper is a prototype, made to Sunlines design by C-West. The fit was amazing, like a glove, almost a factory fit, but Sato san was not happy with it and wanted it better again. I was amazed and he was too , maybe if he saw Irish roads he might know why!

Regarding the R35 GTR, he feels that Nissan have deliberatley made it harder to modify compared to the R32/33/34 GTR's or 350Z, but given time most tuners will highly modify them. His main job for the day we visited on was to create a titanium exhaust system for the R35, his handmade design will be used as a master copy for the production versions


Piers own car - a R34 GTR with a full carbon widebody conversion! Amazing. This is probably the best known of Sunlines cars outside of Japan. It was also used as a CWest demo car as the bodykit was made by them, again designed by Sunline

It is currently fitted with a N1 version of the RB26 engine with a big Trust T88 turbo, along with a Hollinger sequential gearbox, good for around 750bhp, aswell as many of Sunlines own custom parts, far too many to mention. It is primarily a trackcar but Piers does take it out on the road from time to time

Even their Hino double deck transporter is kept in immaculate condition. 31 is Satos lucky number, as nearly all his cars and the transporter have '31' in their reg somewhere

Thanks to Taiyo Sato and Piers Dowding for their help and hospitality

TRIAL

Most tuning companies in Japan are a little bigger than ones you would find in the UK and Ireland but there are a few which are huge and the biggest in Japan is TRIAL in Osaka. Think of a premises the size of a large main dealer except its purely for tuning and modifying cars and your getting close. After a quick meeting with the company founder/director Makihara san, then being smitten with cheif racequeen Chihiro it was time to take it all in, and there was a lot

Heres a shot of a small part of the car park, most of these are customers cars. I love the palm trees

10 work bays, an inhouse engine dyno, a set of rollers and a dynapack, almost everything is done inhouse, all thats missing is a circuit. Not to mention the massive showroom

Im standing just inside the doors here and the 1st thing you see is this smart NSX, also for sale, bit too much for me at the moment!

Also you can see some of the extensive parts displays in the background


Most tuners/garages probably have just a small kettle or its a case of go to the shops for refreshment, but TRIAL have their own bar, and thanks to me and Chris, theres some proper Irish whiskey behind the bar now too!!

In the corner of the showroom, 1 of TRIAL's original R32 GTR's is on display

While outside their PS13 Silvia track car and a R34 GTR for sale can be found

Aswell as some of the latest TRIAL demo/development cars, a FD2 Honda Civic Type R and a MY2008 Subaru Impreza STi

A 350Z convertable on the ramps getting alignment work done

TRIAL will tune any car, from a Suzuki Kei car to a R34 GTR

or 2......

Getting ready to lock up for the evening, or maybe a spot of racing around the kanjo highway.......

Extra special thanks to Yuichi Ikegami and Keisuke san for their help and hospitality, not to mention Chris for his amazing organising skills

Kids Heart

A morning with little planned led us via the Shinkansen to Nagoya and then a short local train journey to Kids Heart, a drift car garage/dealership. The garage manager is D1GP driver Tsuyoshi Tezuka. Kids Heart also made the 'factory' Nissan SilEightys in limited numbers

I really liked this 'Zenki' (early) S14 Silvia

Still not sure if I like Toyota JZX110 Verossas or not


Toyota JZX100 Mark II, they like chrome wheels at Kids Heart, well they have good roads for them so why not

Not only do Kids Heart sell drift cars, they also buy in cars and prepare them for drifting

As seen by these subframes....

and a ER34 4 door up on the ramp, pity the staff were all in the roasting hot office watching drift DVD's and drinking coffee, its an easy life working in a drift car garage in Japan, well apart from the nice girl slaving away in the office

But they still find time to make some lovely cars, this PS13 Silvia being a good example



The main reason I came to Kids Heart and to Japan!! Tezukas D1 JZX81 Mark II, which is my favourite D1GP car, ever! Under the pink paintwork there is a 600bhp 2JZ-GTE with a Trust T78 turbo, Kei Office suspension and plenty of other drift mods. This car is pure evil in my eyes, it should really be kept in a cage!! Tezuka now drives the Bee*Racing B324R Skyline in D1GP but he still finds time to bring this car out for practice days and Kids Hearts own drift series. Look closely in the background and you will see Chris and Tezuka having a chat. A very nice guy like everyone we met in Japan, he remembered me from Silverstone in 2006! Small world. Check out Tezukas blog to the right to see what he gets up to as a lot of what goes on at Kids Heart and in D1 is mentioned

Heres a video of the car in action:

Buying a car??

Back home, most car dealerships have 1, if not 2 high performance models on display, but not in Japan where they tend to be more common...


While on the way back from Signal Auto with Chris we saw this used car dealership called GT Net, so the rather inviting looking forecourt led us in for a closer look

The forecourt was jammed, cars everywhere, making it hard to get a clear shot, here are some Imprezas...

And some Fairlady Z's (or 350Z's) along with some Mitsubishi Evos, a Honda NSX and S2000

A small line up of R32 and R33 Skyline GTR's, Skylines were the most common car there

A pair of R34 GTR's

And my favourite car there, a factory red R32 GTR


Random Japan Part 2. The Japanese police are a bit like their American counterparts as this police station not far from GT Net conveniently has a Mister Donut shop right across the road aswell as the obligatory Toyota Crown patrol car parked outside.....

More Travelling

Time to leave the madness of Tokyo and Yokohama for now, and head for the Kansai region of West Japan, so onto the Shinkansen and 3 hours later arrive in Osaka, already it felt more laid back, unlike the squeaky clean streets of Tokyo there was the odd bit of littler blowing about, people tend to walk on the left side of the street in Tokyo, they walk on the right on Osaka, you get the idea, more laid back in essence


Technically myself and Chris were on holiday so we felt obliged to visit a few of the 'tourist' areas
This is Dōtonbori, and a well known tourist spot, best known for the Glico running man neon sign
Looking up the canal from Ebisubashi Bridge

Random Japan Part 1 - A Dog cafe. In here you can have coffee while looking at dogs in pens, you can pet or play with the dogs, or even rent a dog, and take it out for a walk. The excitement was too much for us to bear so we kept on walking



And onto the great Japanese tradition that is Karaoke. Unlike Ireland, Karaoke is available all day every day in Japan and not at just parties and Thursday nights down the pub....... Chris looks a bit, well smug as Ms Crazy Kansai Cowgirl Yuhi makes a fine rendition of some Japanese pop song that Id never heard of before......

While Chris' uninspired version of a random U2/Guns'n'Roses song forced me to make a Simon Cowell comment

Greeted with a traditional Irish reply.........