|
Aloha
race fans! This month, the Drift Session is heading back to the
motherland: JAPAN! Join us in our first-ever, multi-part series
documenting our trip to the Tokyo Auto Salon as we check out some of
the fastest cars, hang with some of the coolest drifters, and perv
out on hot asian girls. It was definitely a trip to remember. You
can see “Otaku-Mike’s” photos in the Drift Session broadband site,
but the rest of my (Shimos')
pictures will be posted in segments.
Tokyo
Auto Salon Video PART 1
right-click, save-as
Part
2, Fri. January 12, 2006:
6am,
the alarm goes off and the Drift Session team springs into action.
It’s day one of the Tokyo Auto Salon. Since the hotels in the
Makuhari area have been booked solid since about 4 months ago, we
ended up staying in Shinagawa. That’s cool since it puts us near
the city life in Tokyo, but it’s also about a 45 minute train ride
to the Makuhari Messe convention center for the Auto Salon; hence
our early wakeup call.
Friday
was supposed to be industry day at the Auto Salon. Only people with
special passes can get into the show before 1pm, only after that the
general public is allowed inside. Mahalos to our friend Okuyama for
hooking up the passes for us to get in before the afternoon rush.
Although it was supposed to be "industry only" before 1pm,
it sure looked like they let in any jabroni off the street this
year.
The
Tokyo Auto Salon filled 3 main halls of the convention center. Very
similar in feel to the SEMA show in Vegas, but filled primarily with
Japanese companies focusing on racing.
Even
though we arrived early, the show quickly filled up with people
making it difficult to take decent pictures of the various cool
looking vehicles on display. I wouldn’t say that there was
anything too special at Auto Salon, mostly just very well put
together vehicles and tons of campaign girls. Since it was so
difficult to take a full picture of most cars there, I decided to
take pictures of the campaign girls instead. Besides, that’s what
most of you want anyways.
Stay
tuned as the Drift Session releases our picks for 10 best girls at
the Tokyo Auto Salon. Don't worry, we'll show you the rest of the
girls as well too. Can't have too many girls at a car show right?
After
the Auto Salon closed its doors at 6pm, we hung out for a bit with
Option merchandiser Bomba Yamamoto. You may remember Bomba from his
past visits to Hawaii where he visited the track and and R/C drift
gathering too. Bomba and his boys saw that the convention center
walkways were now empty and quickly broke out their R/C drift cars
to sample. Bomba and his boys, Kawasaki (Doriten editor), Drift
Samurai, and I faced off in an impromptu R/C dori match. Samurai and
Bomba’s styles of R/C drift were somewhat more conservative than I
expected, but good nonetheless. Kawasaki’s kamikaze style ended
with his Doriten replica R/C car smashing into the bumper of one of
the immaculate drift cars in his booth. “He’s my friend,” said
Kawasaki. Oh well, I guess it’s okay then.
It
was cool to hang out in the convention center after the show was
closed. We finally managed to get a few unobstructed pictures of
cars that were on display before leaving.
After
exiting the show, we all piled into one of the Doriten guy’s
minivan and shot over to one of the nearby shopping malls for
dinner. All you can eat Shabu shabu was the fare for tonight, and
those skinny Japanese guys can sure pack away the food. But, about
25 plates of raw meat later, we called it a night and made the train
ride back to our hotel. To be continued...
|
