Side Quests - Behind the scenes. (Tokyo, Initial D road trip, More Tsukuba) (Patreon)

Continuing with my trend of not really knowing what to title these posts, how to start them, or what to even put in them. I figured since this year is wrapping up I'd just post a few of the photos I had left over that didn't fit into my other posts. A little behind the scenes at some more of the stuff I've been up to. Starting off with my most recent trip once again to Tsukuba, this time in the Twin.

You can see due to the parking at this event, we're actually inside the Oval speed ring at Tsukuba, and to get to this carpark you actually have to drive across the track to get in, and so technically, my Suzuki Twin has been on track at Tsukuba.

As always, the carparks are the place to go to see some pretty diverse builds and some hidden gems.

Inside the event it was more of an exhibitors day than a race day, plenty of companies around showing off their goods, a great chance for me to practice my Japanese since everyone here is a fellow car nut and that's about all I know how to talk about.

It's great to get out to these places and remind myself why I moved to Japan. Yeah sure we had some of this back in NZ, but there's just something about the scene here in Japan that hits differently from back home.

As always, some of my favorite cars are the fun little nuggets being driven as fast as they can possible go. This little Alto was giving me quite a bit of inspiration for my own Suzuki.

Awesome colour on this R34 too. As these cars have become so insanely desirable, you don't tend to see people step outside of the normal, white, bayside blue, or midnight purple colours for these.

One thing I wasn't expecting was the Futura trailers jump scare.

Trailers really just aren't a thing here in Japan. Almost always if you see someone transporting a car, it's on the back of a truck. So seeing an a Trailer brand from back in New Zealand on display here was a surprise.

Honestly I could spend hours just walking around Tsukuba looking at all the cars and filling up my SD card with photos I'll probably never look at again, but it's always a good time.I was recently visted by my good friend Stan who viewers of the channel should recognize as the legend behind the 3D scanning and modeling that's gone into my Stagea and MR-C builds. While he was hear we decided to go out and hit up a few spots around Tokyo, specifically a whole crap tonne of model shops mostly around Akihabara.I didn't take my camera with me so here are just a few quick snaps I grabbed with my phone.

Met this fun dude cruising around in his R34. We got chatting and he also has a Toyota Chaser that he drifts, and this R34 is just his fun little runabout.

It had a really sick NA RB25 under the hood running ITBs and simple extractors. Wasn't expecting to chat to anyone in Akihabara about cars but he was a cool dude. Definitely a bit shocked at the white boy coming up to him with bags shopping bags full of model kits and talking about engines in Japanese.

Speaking of models, there were a few. It was late and my phone is terrible so these photos get pretty blurry haha.

Huge lineup of Tomica, I've been hunting for some HotWheels trying to find mine again in it's original colour scheme so I can have some to hand out. Still a little odd to me that I didn't get a box of them to give away and have to buy them all myself lol.

A step up from Tomica you have all the super insanely high detailed die casts of a similar size. These when anywhere from like $30 nzd to $250. I can see how people could spend a lot money in this hobby, but I have full sized cars stealing all of mine.

Plenty of small scale Group C cars for me to debate buying for research purposes.

Then jumping up in scale from 1:64 you have row after row of 1:24 scale diecasts, all insane quality.

My thing though isn't finished and assembled models, but plastic kits that I buy, telling myself that I'll absolutely build it but not ever getting started on it because I want to do it properly.

One of the greatest stores I found for that was this tiny little hidden gem called Leonardo ET. It wasn't on the main street and you had to walk down a couple alleyways to even find it, and this was all you see from outside.

Inside was one of the most impressively claustrophobic floor to ceiling collections of old model kits from just about every genre. Airplanes, boats, cars, bikes, trains. All there.

Nearly all the kits are pre-owned and so you can get them for some pretty good deals.

You can see the aisles are more of a labyrinth, with shelves put in as like a spiriling maze barely even wide enough to hold a box sideways. Walking past someone actually wasn't possible and one of you had to back up into a corner or find an empty slot on a shelf and cram yourself in. It was great.

I ended up buying 4 kits and would have bought more if not for the store being cash only and me going down to my last 1000 yen after taking these home with me.Akihabara can be a pretty wild place, you can go there and just look at model kits or anime merch or various electronics for hours, or you can go there and spend thousands of dollars on adult videos and comic books. And most of those are in the same building separated by only 1 floor. It's the kind of place you almost want a clear bag so you can show everyone "it's just model kits, look, nothing weird in here, please stop giving me suspicious looks." I can understand why my friends wives don't want them coming here without supervision. After that we headed further into tokyo to checkout the Tamiya Museum. Again no proper camera and the photos here got really blurry but there was a sick rally car in the lobby, and just about all the model kits you could ask for.

Didn't get a photo of outside but this is it in the day time

And I thought that was pretty cool for a lobby car until we walked across the road to the Spark Gallery building.

More awesome models. Really should have bought one so I'd have at least one completed diecast in my pile of shame.

It was also on this same week that we headed out to Up Garage which I've already shown.Getting home with the loot:

I was intimidated by the cars and so I actually got started with the little book nook thing that nobody cares about but it was fun to make and I'd recommend it if that sounds like your jam.

And to wrap up this post and go back actually a few months. I caught up again with my mate Heinne who is this guy if you don't remember.

And he's a lot like me where he'd rather just chill at home working on cars than go out, so we kinda force eachother out of our comfort zones occasionally and do these little road trips. This last one we went on we decided to hit up Mt Akagi and Mt Haruna, made famous from Initial D.

We went in our kei car and his friends came in their 86's and we had a pretty cool moment when they parked up for a photo, and in total we think about 6 other 86's came and parked up for a photo before carrying on on their way.

Japan has this thing with special manhole covers, and this area was one of a bunch that were specially designed as an Initial D tie in.

You can see each team or crew that makes the trip up here slaps their stickers on this sign. The handrail too was covered in multiple layers of white paint covering over the years of stickers.

On our trip from Mt Haruna to Akagi, we also stopped by the Initial D cafe.

After that the final stop was the lake at Akagi, unfortunately the place was all closed down and the temple out in the lake was undergoing renovations so we couldn't get in to see it, but still some pretty unique vibes to this area that almost reminded me of family trips to little beaches back when I was a kid.

That's probably fine for a post right? Good chat.✌