While going through some old footage, we found some videos from June that had yet to end up getting put into a video. This was a weekend in June where I went to a Friday night meeting at Akihabara UDX and then was off to Hakone for a Rotary car meeting in Hakone.
I stumbled upon a yellow RWB Porsche while walking around Akihabara, which let me know that I was getting close to the action. There were several great cars in the underground parking lot that caught my eye, and I was lucky to finally see a handful of itasha liveries. It wasn't a huge turnout like I saw in my favourite documentary Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, but I had a great time and met some good friends.
The next event was on the Sunday, my friend Mr. Kakuta invited me to go to a rotary car meeting in Hakone. His first-generation RX7 has been one of my favourite cars for a while, so I was super excited when he offered to pick me up in his iconic blue SA22C equipped with a ported N/A 13B engine. We had to leave Tokyo bright and early to make the drive out to Hakone and get to the meeting on time. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see Mt. Fuji, but the view of hundreds of rotary-powered cars was a beautiful sight nonetheless.
The meeting was so much fun, and I really enjoyed getting to talk to lots of new people about their cars. There was a huge variety of all sorts of Mazda's, like Cosmos, RX-3, and every RX7 imaginable. Across the street was another car meeting. In particular, this GT-R Hakosuka really caught my eye. I gave out a bunch of Checkpoint stickers to people and was really happy to see how excited the recipients were. It was a long drive back in the Tokyo traffic, and felt especially long given how hot it was that day, but it went by quickly as we sang along to songs from the 80's and enjoyed the sound of ported rotary engine.
If you've made it this far, I really appreciate it! Hopefully you enjoyed this weeks video and the article. It's a bit bittersweet for me posting this as it's the last proper episode of Sandals in Japan, and I now have to come to terms with that chapter of my life coming to a close.
We will be releasing one final video to wrap up the series, where I'll be talking about everything I wish I had known before moving to Japan. Hopefully, I'll be able to give anyone who's also looking to go to Japan some insight into my own experiences. If there are any questions you'd like me to answer, please leave a comment on the RU-vid video and I'd love to help where I can!
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Enjoy!
(Professional drivers on a closed course, do not attempt.)
18 янв 2024
