Fun fact: 80% of Tokyo’s mass consists of vending machines, convenience stores, and arcades with coin-operated capsule dispensers. This is all an effort to drive the sales of mystery boxes, which ranks 4th in Japan’s top 10 industries, right between consumer electronics and shipbuilding. For the uninitiated (consider yourselves lucky), mystery boxes are little collectible toys with a common theme and several different items to complete the series (in the case of vending machines, the toys come attached to your refreshing beverage). But, rather than doing something useful like actually showing you what you’re going to get, the box is sealed, making the entire enterprise a lottery, like baseball cards or things at the bottom of cereal boxes. Of course, the ultimate goal is to get you to buy ever more mystery boxes and to drive OCD types insane.

While stopping into one of Japan’s 9 billion 7-11s, lo and behold, what did we find but a Nissan Skyline 50th Anniversary mystery box. As you can see from the packaging, we had only a 1 in 6 chance of getting something really cool and nostalgic, and for 500 yen (about $5), they weren’t exactly a cheap gamble. Nevertheless, we bit. And check out what we got on our first try:

Kenmeri GT-R, baby! And it’s superdeformed to boot!

It was a great start to a day filled with Nissans that all began behind this nondescript door.

This is the Zama warehouse, where almost the entirety of Nissan’s automotive and racing history is kept. It was like the lost Nazi-looted Russian Amber Room, Bruce Wayne’s garage, and the room at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark all rolled into one.

After that, we ate lunch at the Nissan employee cafeteria. The food was pretty damn good. No rubbery pizza tiles here!

We also stopped by Honda’s showroom in Aoyama Itchome, which you may recognize from the Tokyo Route 246 track in Gran Turismo 4.

More to come…

Special thanks to Mr. “Itchy” for being our guide!

If there’s one thing the Japanese love, it’s superdeformation. Do not be alarmed. That simply means the superdeformee’s features are exaggerated to give it a cartoonish, caricatured look. Everything from animals to anime characters get the treatment, and even inanimate objects can’t escape the process, with several whole toy car lines dedicated to it, like Maruka’s Drive Town and Takara’s Choro-Q, the latter of which you may remember as Penny Racers here in the States.

There’s just something indescribably cute about these cars, so please excuse us while we shout “Kawaiiiiii!” like a 12-year-old Japanese girl at Sanrio Puroland. Now, for your viewing pleasure, here are some 3D rendered versions, which, if not for their distorted proportions, would look entirely real. In fact, art66 has a whole gallery of these, along with other vehicular works of art in the form of shadowboxes, 2D illustrations, and that other Japanese favorite, papercraft. Check them out, adore them, and maybe create some lolcars. Kthxbai.

When we were kids, we’d scuff up furniture, walls, floors, ceilings and anything else our parents valued with hundreds of little metal cars. Of course, in the US that meant Matchbox or Hot Wheels, and for a brief while, Pocket Cars. Of course, Pocket Cars was the American market name for Tomica, a Japanese line of diecast cars that, unlike their 1:1 scale counterparts, had a very little success in the US, due mainly to their higher cost and lack of recognizable models (to American eyes, at least).

In Japan, however, Tomicas thrived and in 2004, parent company Tomy launched a new lineup called Tomica Limited Vintage, a line of highly detailed cars based on nostalgics! Cars range from Prince Skylines to Mazda K360 three-wheelers to Toyota Crowns. Prices start at ¥790 for a small car like Subaru 360 Wagon and cap out at ¥3000 for a Hino RB10 Bus. All models are 1/64 scale.