MotorFIX Photos

I'm slowly putting up my images that I took at the MotorFIX Sokokai and from my trip in general on www.grantscottphotography.com. I'm not putting too many of the MotorFIX ones up just yet because it is my hope to have them published somewhere... But I'll see how that pan's out.

Here's Sakai-San holding my magazine that I gave to him with my car in it.

The new 1UZ corolla, I still cannot believe I got to ride in this.

The infamous MotorFIX wagon... I love this thing.

S13

I'm slowly getting happy with this car again. The fresh motor is feeling good, however I am still very timid when driving it. Obviously I still need to run in the rings, but on top of that the fuel pump decided it wants out. It whines a lot after driving the car for a while but I will replace that this week.

When I was in Japan I bought a full set of 5mm slip on spacers for the car, so I put them in yesterday and lowered it about 7mm each side. It was just on legal height before which is where I wanted to keep it, but I don't think I will get into too much trouble with it looking like this.

Ultimately I'd love to buy a set of 10-15mm bolt on's and possibly looking at getting the tear drops widened (a thousand keyboard warriors just cried in unison), just for the sake of pure subtlety. But by the time I put in the money and hours for that I might as well get some good works for it... It'll happen one day.

I'm also very happy with my cup holder I bought from Up Garage, I've been wanting one like this for a long time. Of Course having Seven Stars there is a given. 

Final Japan iPhone Shots

Got some final iPhone photos from my Japan trip for all you guys reading out there!

Karaage, Tomago and deep friend cheese from one of my nights in Shinjuku... Getting damn hungry looking at this right now.

My Bento box on the Shinkansen ride down from Tokyo to Osaka... Damn, still hungry...

The views of the houses are gorgeous on the train, I absolutely loved taking the Shinkansen each time.

More food, my favorite; Gyoza and Karaage.

The Hiroshima Atomic Dome. This was 600 metres below the blast when it happened in 1945.

Ok... I won't...

So many of these in Osaka.

My new official offset measurement tool.

The deer at Nara are quite polite, they bow at you.

This temple is a replica of one about twice the size that apparently fell over... This one was huge so it would have been an amazing site to see the original.

Vs-KF's are common as dirt. I spotted this in Kyoto.

Spotted this pretty in Shinsaibashi, Osaka.

Grabbed myself some magnets from Daiso.

This is the Umeda Sky Building. It was highly recommended to me to go see and I would recommend it again. Those lines going from one building to the next are escalators.

The view from the Umeda Sky Deck, looking towards Shin-Osaka.

The top of the Umeda sky deck has a fence covered in these engraved love hearts that people buy especially for the fence.

Here's one of the aforementioned escalators... Quite scary going up them!

Random BMW running BBS wheels, apparently its a requirement in Japan.

Up Garage! One of my favorite parts of my trip!

Spare Longchamp anyone?

I couldn't believe the variety of cool wheels here.

Check out those Watanabe's, 13j!!!

Good lord I'd love to have a local shop that sells stuff like this!

Imagine having a super cheap sell stuff like this, "Oh hey, I was just looking for a set of coilovers for my Ae86..." "Sure thing they're over on that shelf." ><

I should have got this, but it would have been a pain to get back to Aus. A manifold to run quad throttles on a 4age... I can guarantee it would be worth more than $100 in Aus.

Alexi holding up a $600 R35 headlight. Alexi was the sole reason I got up to Up Garage so I am very thankful for him taking us up there as well as showing us around parts of Tokyo.

I snapped up these Hayashi centre caps, there were only two but my Streets never came with them. Definitely looks cooler.

Badass sunny parked at Up Garage.

Same as this Odyssey.

Got myself a hangring too... I had one at home already but you can never have too many.

Our last day in Japan was at Tokyo disney. Here is C-3PO talking Japanese to us.

Spotted this on one of the kids car rides at Tokyo Disney... Not real though.

I had to go on this ride, even though it was for kids how could i resist.

 I have to say too, if the track that these ran on was real it would be the most amazing drift track ever!

The castle at Disney, quite epic.

This took a lot of strength to not buy, would have been awesome to run at a drift day for a joke.

Our last night in Japan we went out for my girlfriend Emily's birthday. The 3 course meal we had was amazing! This was the desert.

A bit of light reading waiting for my plane. I ended up with two JDM option mags, Two G-Works, a Drift Tengoku and a VIP magazine.

My LA dodgers hat... Still love it.

Could the gate number be a coincidence? I think not...

Hayashi caps on the wheels, looks pretty cool!

MotorFIX Test Vid

Thanks to Daniel Dietrich for bringing this to my attention; as soon as it gets wet on track I am riding in the passenger seat :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBHSivMyC-w&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Osaka Spending

So I have had a pretty decent day of spending today... All of which I hadn't planned for.

I've been wanting to find myself a really cool iPhone cover... every cover I have had in Aus is usually see through and very crap quality so one it gets grubby really easily, and two it really doesn't go well with the white back of my iPhone.

I managed to find this Rilakkuma cover which fits perfect and looks awesome!

Here's a bit of light reading I've been doing, I picked these up in Tokyo at the Shinkansen station a few days back. Managed to find the one G-Works magazine they had hidden in the shelf's lol!

We stopped off at Shinsaibashi today to an area which has just an amazing amount of clothing stores, I've been wanting to get myself a cool flat cap for a while now but didn't wanna pay the stupid prices that are at City Beach in Australia for a cap you see everyone wearing. Japan is pretty big on baseball so that's my excuse for getting myself a kickass LA dodgers cap.

Den Den Town in Namba is just across the road from where we are staying, it's an area thats just full of stores that sell electronics and lots and lots of Anime related stuff. You will find levels of stores with cool shit you will never see in Australia. I've had mates bring back Anime characters to sit on the dash of their drift cars, so I felt it would be cool to do the same.

This is Asuka Langley from Neon Genesis Evangelion, my girlfriend is an amazing anime geek so now she has insisted that she shows me the show!

In the same store I found a car model section which I spent a large amount of time trying to find cool shit. I managed to find these cool little matchbox sized car models of old school greats!
I got myself a gx61...

... and a GC110. Freaking cool!

I'm something of a geek for car models, particularly Fujimi brand ones. Back in Australia I've built a few 86's and a Soarer... I think I've still got a Trueno hatch to build and an s13 which is the same model and color as my one in real life.

In this store I found a shelf full of these Fujimi models, but luckily there was nothing too much of interest that I wouldn't have been able to find in Australia with some hard searching...

The thing I decided I really wanted to find over here were Fujimi and Aoshima brand wheels that you buy to go with these models. I've bought one set before off a forum and thought it was the coolest thing ever, but you would NEVER find them in Australia.

Unfortunately for my wallet, I found this shop called JOSHIN.

Probably very similar to a Toy'R'us... This 6 level shop (each level about the size of an average convenience store) had the whole second level filled with toy cars, trains and planes... and the entire third floor dedicated to TAMIYA.

On the second floor though I found all of my Fujimi models, pretty much everyone one of which seemed rare as all hell... I was lucky to get out with only buying three of them.

They also had Aoshima and Tamiya models on the other side, this one would have been pretty damn cool to buy. 

 They had half a wall full of my wheels that I was after... Knowing how hard it is to get these back home I told myself to buy as many as I wanted... I got 7 LOL. At roughly $5 each it was a steal.

I managed to escape with only buying this much, but all up I paid about 12,500 Yen.

I bought myself an Aoshima Vertex S13 and Gc10 Bosozoku Skyline, a Fujimi Gx61 MarkII, a set of Fujimi R33 wheels for my fujimi S13 back home, Star Formula, Longchamps, Hayashi Streets (YES!) and Aoshima sets of SSR MKIII's, Focus Racing and Equipe 01's.

After prying myself from JOSHIN, I managed to spot this rad looking S15. Buddy Club P1's all round and very tidy!

My wallet is having a tough time in Japan, Emily and I have realised that with the amount of stuff we are buying we are going to need another suitcase to travel home with. We ducked into a shop quickly where I found the whole wall to have second hand film SLRs.

Having been wanting to get myself a Canon Film SLR for quite a while I couldn't help but look closely at them. They ranged from old and new and from base models all the way up to EOS 1's and 5's.

Long story short... I am now the proud owner of a Canon EOS 1 Film SLR LOL!

Oh and did I mention it only cost me 10,000 Yen?!

 Every one of my lenses will fit in so this camera is perfect for me... I'm giddy with excitement, I seriously cannot wait to chuck a roll in there and get started!

Also... I finally have a full frame SLR! Get lost 40D!!!

 Well that's it for my day in Japan... I don't wanna know how much I ended up spending, but I'm very happy with it all. I'm sure there's going to be more spent, especially if I visit an Up Garage.. Oh God.. That's going to hit my wallet hard lol.

Later!