By Alexi in
07-08-2009 6:14 pm
The only criticism I’ve heard from people so far about Noriyaro is that I don’t update enough. I suppose I should remove that RSS feed thing there on the right of screen…
Seeing as anything is better than nothing, here’s some words to read.
Things to look forward to next week are the pics from the August 8th AE86 meeting at Nikko Circuit and pics from Ebisu Summer Drift Matsuri this weekend. All my tyres are sorted out, but there’s still a few more things to do. As for coverage, I’m going to carry my little camera around and take photos at regular intervals during the day and night. I had planned to do this last time, but I didn’t end up bothering since drifting is a lot more fun!
That reminds me, I’d better go and put the second battery in the charger.
By Alexi in
04-08-2009 12:19 am
A couple of weeks ago, I went down to Osaka for a few days to do various things unrelated to cars. For some of that time, I wandered around Namba, Shinsaibashi, and all those other places that have interesting things in them.
Entirely at random, I came across the Garson store in Amemura, which had only recently opened.
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By Alexi in
01-08-2009 3:09 pm
I’ve said before that I don’t really want to post up pics of “Engrish”, since you get emails from people calling you ignorant and racist.
How you can be racist and live in Japan though, I have no idea.
Anyway, just like anywhere else in the world, truck drivers are considered tough and rough guys in Japan. As a result, the names of some of the big road machinery sound equally impressive, such as the the Isuzu Gigamax and the Mitsubishi Fuso Super Great.
Sometimes though, they kind of miss the mark.
By Alexi in
30-07-2009 10:58 pm
A while ago, I received an email from Yoshibumi-san of the Mature panel shop in Utsunomiya, asking if I’d like to come along to the opening of his new remote-control drifting track.
“Your what?” I thought.
Turns out that he had decided to build a dedicated RC drift course in the top level of his workshop to give local drifters a place to hang out together and drift on a smaller scale when they weren’t at the track. I wasn’t able to make it on the weekend during the opening, but I was in the area on Friday, so decided to drop in and have a look.
Out in front of the shop was this JZX100 that belongs to the owner of Technical Garage Sudou. Yoshibumi-san not only did the awesome fade on the paint, but designed the bodykit too! Mature kits aren’t all that well known yet, but they make ones for quite a few vehicles, including Yoshibumi-san’s favourite Imprezas.
If you’re wondering about the flowers, it’s customary when a business in Japan undergoes a grand opening or expansion that other businesses related to that one, or even ones in the same field, send flowers with large name tags to congratulate them.
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By Alexi in
28-07-2009 12:45 am
I saw this guy on the highway the other day. He zoomed past me at about 160km/h, swerving through traffic the whole time, which made it a bit hard to catch up and follow him while holding the camera out the window!
His mudflaps were about an inch off the ground. Try to imagine this going about twice as fast as everyone else, and you might understand why I took this pic.
By Alexi in
19-07-2009 12:30 am
These two happy chaps, Dave and Devin, are AE86 guys from Canada. Dave sent me an email a while ago saying they were coming to Japan, and luckily for them, our schedules meant that I was able to give them some rides to various places to see interesting things, like Ebisu Circuit, SS Park and Honjo Circuit. As you can see, they’re standing in a place that looks like a lot of fun.
Devin even makes a bunch of custom parts for AE86 under the name “D Garage”, so I’m sure he’ll comment with some contact info if there’s anyone here who’s interested!
今から、ちょっとだけ日本語を書いていいでしょう？このブログは、日本人が読んでいますね。私の日本語はまけっこ悪いけど、がんばる！この二人はカナダのハチロクドリフトマニアだ。デイヴ（でぶじゃなくて）とデビン。私といっしょうに、峠に行って来ました。「日本の峠は最高だ！」って。
By Alexi in
17-07-2009 7:00 am
This weekend, my local Super Autobacs is having an opening anniversary event. Daigo Saito, Yoshinori Koguchi and D1 commentator Manabu “Mana-P” Suzuki will be there, so I would have liked to go and take some pics since I could practically walk there, but I’ll be somewhere else this weekend!
To make up for it, here’s a pic of Daigo’s D1 car at Super Autobacs, surrounded by shiny things.
By Alexi in
16-07-2009 11:13 am
Because you just know there’s someone out there who would pay money for this.
By Alexi in
05-07-2009 10:41 pm
Any info is better than none, so here’s a bit of news about what’s going on with Noriyaro at the moment.
I recently posted the 200th article on the site. Hooray!
I’m also currently back in Australia for the next two weeks, so posts might slow down a bit (what, even more?!?). I have an enormous backlog of random photos I haven’t used so far on the site though, so I’ll be going through my old stuff when I have some spare time, and posting up what I can find. Off the top of my head, I know I have some pics of a 1JZ-powered Toyota Crown wagon drift car that some of you might find interesting, as well as pics from the “2PD Meeting” for automatic-only drift cars at Fuji Speedway.
Now here’s an interesting one. I won’t be contributing any more content to the Speedhunters website.
I remember that a lot of you guys had a gut reaction of “Thanks for killing another blog I like to read, Speedhunters” when it was announced that I was going to write for them.
I should have listened, since the readers who said that are exactly the ones I’m writing this sort of stuff for.
Let’s not go into that too much though. It’s done, and I think the car blog world already has enough slow-motion “I just bought a camera that can do it” videos, or self-absorbed art-school verbal wankery where I talk about myself and my own “journey” instead of the subject, or sentences that end with “don’t you think?”.
Noriyaro is and will always be all about showing you what goes on in Japan: cool people doing cool stuff with cool cars.
I also have a couple of ideas for making Noriyaro a little bit more interactive. More on that another time!
By Alexi in
17-05-2009 12:30 am
…we heard you like cars, so we put a Honda Z600 in the back of your van so you can drive while you drive.
