Visiting Japan 2025

A few weeks ago I decided to go to Japan to check out the car scene and to do some general exploring in the Tokyo area. The last time I had gone was about 5 years ago, and I was pretty disappointed to find that the car scene was just about dead!

Although Japan is perhaps the safest place in the world and has an excellent public transportation system, I think one of the best stress-free ways to visit Japan, if you are a first-timer, is to take one of DSport Magazine’s Auto person tours.   They have all-inclusive packages that include lodging, transportation, guides, and curated visits to some of Japan’s automotive hotspots all for a reasonable price.

We hung out with the DSport gang and did a bit of non-auto-related sightseeing on this trip, as well, we won’t talk about this too much, but we will just go on a whirlwind tour of what we did for a week.

I flew out of LAX with my Daughter Christa and we had some flight delays and landed in the Handea international airport 3 hours later than we were supposed to.  This caused us to miss the transportation that DSport had arranged for us to our hotel.  However, since Japan’s public transportation is so good, it was a minor inconvenience.  We simply jumped on a commuter train to Shinagawa where our hotel was and one transfer later we were there in about 45 minutes.  We love the Shinagawa Prince Hotel, it is across the street from the train station and only a few stops on the train away from most of Tokyo’s fun sights.  It is also very reasonably priced.

Here is the view from our Hotel room at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel.  Tokyo at night is no joke.  That building below is the Shinagawa train station.

There is a wonderful bar at the top of the Shinagawa Prince hotel with floor to ceiling windows.   Unfortunately we got in pretty late and the trains had stopped running so we had to call it a night.

Japan really needs Diet Coke. I don’t like Coke Zero. Seriosly the 7-11 stores in Japan kick ass.  The prepared food there is actually really good. You can eat and drink well at 7-11.

I have a 30-year-old tradition of always getting sick in Japan.  I think different germs and being in a crowded urban environment gets me every time.  Some Japanese friends told me to drink this stuff and I did every day.  I didn’t get sick for the first time and I still feel pretty good a few weeks later.  I am looking to buy this stuff here.

We visited Real Speed Engineering, otherwise known as Tomei USA. They are founded by Tomei Japan’s ex #2 guy who somehow has an exclusive on the Tomei name in America.  Their quality looks to be top notch and I am going to run one of their full Titanium exhaust systems on my R35 GT-R.

We also visited Up Garage.  Up Garage is a huge chain of used parts stores specializing in tuning parts.  There are some great deals here but a lot of the cool stuff gets snapped up right away.  You can buy from them online and have the parts shipped here.  Christa was tripping out how small the upgrade turbo for some Kei car was.

The Nissan engine museum was a must-see.  We got here about 30 minutes before it closed and had to rush through, which was unfortunate as I wanted to take my time here.  We also visited Nissan headquarters in Yokohama, which was sort of disappointing.  The entire Nissan lineup seemed to be taken over by a lot of nondiscript small van/crossover looking things and a lone GT-R and 400Z.  No nice sedans or compact cars.  What are you doing, Nissan?  I was so bummed I didn’t even take any pictures.

That night we went to a car meet in Odaiba. Odaiba is a high-tech entertainment hub on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. There is a beach at Seaside Park, the giant Daikanransha Ferris wheel, and the Miraikan science museum. There are some cool shopping areas, such as Aqua City and the Venice-themed VenusFort, and the Gundam museum.

There were many very nicely modded cars at the meet and I forgot to take pictures. Lame. The meet was packed, which was awesome as last time I was in Tokyo the car scene was really dead.  The meet was at a kart track and there was a time trial connected to the meet.  Christa, who is an accomplished kart driver, wanted to try to win, but for some reason her kart was nerfed.  It was really slow down the straights compared to others.  Still, she was fastest in her run group and on the leader board, but about a second off the really fast people.

The next day it was time to go check out the Tokyo Auto Salon.  Last time I went to the event, it was not attended fully and I was disappointed in how far the Japanese car scene had gone downhill.  The DSport people had gotten us VIP media passes which allowed us to get into the venue about 4 hours early. Man the show was packed even during media time, and when the gates opened, it was crazy, almost too many people to walk around, and we could not see anything closely.

Here are the first few minutes of media hours right when they started letting us in.

I was lame and didn’t take many pictures, mostly because there were too many people to get close enough.  This was a Mini Cooper made to look like a GT3 RS.  Why?

The most interesting thing that I could get close enough to was Toyota’s new 400 hp 2 liter 4 cylinder engine that is rumored to power the return of the Celica and MR2.  Look how big the turbo is!  It looks pretty serious.

The Tokyo Auto Salon got so packed that we left early and took a ride to the Ginza District, the Rodeo Drive of Tokyo.  Nissan’s Nissan Crossing showroom is here, which often shows Nissan concept car and has a cafe.  This is a concept of a potential R36.  I hope they don’t make this.

They also had a Milinial Jade T-Spec which looks just like our future Project R35 GT-R.

Car Culture is back big time.  We were walking around and ran into this impromptu meet.

In Tokyo, there are many cool things like a cool closet-sized bar with a great whiskey selection that we ran into around the corner from that meet we ran into.

We went to Tokyo’s Asakusa district, which has the vibe of old Tokyo. Many small warren-like streets with all kinds of small shops and the Famous Senso-ji shrine.

We went to this TikTok famous katsu restaurant where you finish cooking your katsu on a hot stone.  Because of TikTok, it was an hour wait. The place was tiny, like my living room, and the line was around the block.  It was pretty good, but not worth the wait to me as finding good food in Japan is so easy.

Here is the famous statue of Hatchi the dog at the Shibuya train station. Google Hatchi’s story it is an interesting read. This is right where the famous Shibuya crossing is that you saw in Tokyo drift.  I forgot to take a picture of it hahahaha.  The Shinjuku district is now where the cool people go and has a vibrant nightlife.

We walked really quickly through Akiabara district, where there are a lot of Anime, Manga and Otaku stores.  They also have cool airsoft and die cast car stuff.  I don’t remember Evasive building this car but here it is.

Liberty Walk has a store in Shibuya where all the cool people go. Not much car stuff, just clothes and stuff.  Harajuku is near here, but don’t expect any JDM Harajuku girls, just American and European tourist girls dressed up in what they think a Harajuku girl looks like.  All the JDM cool kids have moved on like 10 years ago!

Of course you need to go to Karaoke in Japan.  Mike Ferrara, owner of DSport can really sing, in Korean.

With the current exchange rate, everything in Japan is like half the cost of California. There were a lot of places with all-you-can-drink alcohol.  Even all you can drink alcohol and all you can eat Shabu together for only 40 bucks per person!

All you can drink karaoke leads to some blue drink damage. This was a pretty epic night.

The next day we went to a drift event at Mobara Twin Circuit, which is a really neat small track that has a lot of goodness packed into a small piece of land.  It is great for drift, grip, and kart racing.  The track, although small, has a good flow to it.  I wish someone built a well-planned-out facility like that here.

Christa had a lot of fun riding with some D1 guys and she spent a lot of time as Larry Chen’s passenger.  Larry can drive pretty good, although he is world famous as a photographer.  Christa got more interested in drifting after this experience.

Some of the interesting things we saw for sale.  I think something got lost in translation here.

Nothing like some super expensive Edo period porn.  I guess this was a thing in the 17th century. Just the thing I want to look at while eating.

The Shinagowa Prince hotel has this aquarium in it.  You might recognize it from the Anime Zom 100.

This aquarium, although a little on the small side, is pretty good and I recommend seeing it.

Next it was off to Fujinomiya to visit the HKS factory.  I was really looking forward to seeing this. We are at a rest stop on the side of the highway.  Like Europe, the rest stops in Japan are pretty amazing with shops and places to eat.

Even at a rest stop, the food is pretty awesome. It is really difficult to find bad food in Japan, I am not kidding.

Another rest stop on the way had this awesome waterfall.

Japanese style toilets are not so awesome. In Tokyo, the western style toilet is normal, but out in the countryside you get the traditional Japanese toilet. Sort of like camping with a flush.  Don’t crap in your pants, that would suck. Also, in the countryside to expect everyone to understand English like you would in the city.

The HKS factory was huge, in fact it is bigger than the Porsche Stuttgart factory!  I was disappointed that we only had time to see a small portion of it.

HKS is located right at the base of Mt Fuji, a very beautiful setting.  They brought out one of their tuned R34’s and it was an amazing piece of craftsmanship.  It has a 900 hp RB30 for power and has been totally gone through.  I think HKS is selling them for $600,000, which really is not unreasonable.  I noticed the rear wing had DRS. This was my favorite car of the trip.

We went through several of HKS’s on-site museums.   This one has HKS’s history of JGTC cars and a few open wheelers.

Here is the famous CT230R carbon Evo that Nob Taniguchi drove. I think this car is legendary and it was awesome to see it in person.

This GT500 car had inboard rocker arm suspension.

I think this was an early GT500 R33 GT-R.

Another building held a history of HKS’s engines.  Here is a 3.5 liter V12 that was planned for F1 use.  For some reason it never saw racing use and was more of an engineering exercise for HKS.  I really wanted to see this engine and it was a highlight for me.

This looks like a Mitsubishi G54 variant for a rally program.  Since the head on the G54 sucks, I wonder how this twin cam vairent worked?

In another building, there were some time attack cars.  Here is HKS’s FR-S with a 2J variant in it. I wonder how our Pike’s Peak winning Evasive FR-S would stack up against it?

I finally get to see Andrew Brilliants Infinity wing splitter in real life!  Andrew, what does that hole do?

Here is the car.  Andrew tells me that the Infinity wing makes a lot of downforce with low drag.  I really want to work with him someday. Or at least drink whisky.

Yume Obado, our tour guide, works for HKS USA in Arizona and flew to Japan to work at TAS.

Our last night, we wanted to go out on the town and went to Shinjuku district to do cool guy stuff.  Just out of the Shinjuku stations west gate is Piss Alley, a rats nest collection of small bars and food stands.

Piss Alley is seedy but fun and being in Japan very safe although in any other country your life would be in danger here. Piss Alley is like a throwback to early Showa Period Tokyo.

We had a great time hopping around the bars here and meeting people from around the world.  I wish we had more time here.

Of course you need to go to Japan’s Don Quixote stores.  They have a whimsical mix of odd JDM products that I really can’t explain like this.

We enjoyed our view of the city from our hotel room and in the morning took a train back to the airport.  There is never enough time to see everything you want to see in Japan and it remains my favorite city in the world to visit.

I recommend you take the time to go yourself.  Currently, with the yen to dollar exchange rate, it is very cheap to go there.

Sources

DSport