This is the Gate Tower Building in downtown Osaka, an otherwise nondescript office high-rise except for the fact that the Hanshin Expressway goes right through the middle of it.

How did this happen? Apparently it’s the result of a freak zoning loophole that can be traced back to the Meiji Era. Construction negotiations stood at an impasse for five years, and when the builders finally reached a compromise, this is what happened.

The highway bores through levels 5 through 7 of the building, but lest an errant car come barreling through some hapless office worker’s cubicle, those floors contain no tenants, only elevator shafts and stairwells. In somewhat comical Japanese fashion, this most obvious trait was completely ignored when nicknaming the building, which has been christened  “the beehive” due to its busy atmosphere. Follow the jump for one more photo of what it looks like as you’re about to drive through it. (more…)

Ok, this car isn’t nostalgic (or even a car, really), but the idea is timeless. After graduating high school, three Japanese buddies decided to follow their dream of a year-long cross-country road trip, from the northeastern island of Hokkaido to the southwestern one of Yakushima. But before they set out, the trio built one of the coolest road trip cars ever conceived, from a decrepit mid-80s Toyota Toyoace. (more…)

America ain’t perfect, but damn if she isn’t beautiful. Is there any greater joy in life than taking in this beauty behind the wheel of an old car? Forget voting and the right to pontificate, this is freedom, man. Forgive us as we delve into the realm of sentimentality, but if you want a foolproof cure for every depressing day you’ll ever have, all you need is one nostalgic car and a journey thats at least 500 miles long. Then the next time you feel the weight of the world on your temples, just remind yourself of this experience. For this writer, his beautifully written adventures in a Toyota Corolla have stayed with him, even 30 years later. You can’t buy medicine like that. Makes us want to take the old wagon out for a spin.

[TTAC]

Alas, our journey to Japan has come to an end. This morning we packed up our 10,000 lbs of brochures, some low down springs for the Cressida wagon, and 500 mystery boxes into Satoshi’s lowered 1995 Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear Super Exceed and headed out to Narita Airport.

The road to Narita.

Before we part, let’s take a look at his van’s endearing but typical excesses of Japanese badging.

Here’s the first pic we took waaay back on Day 1. From left to right, it says “Mitsubishi”, “Delica” and “Space Gear”. Fine. We’ve got the make, model, and sub-model established.

On the B-pillar a small badge tells the world this is no mere base trim specimen, but a “Super Exceed”.

As mentioned before, this cruiser has five sunroofs, one of which is causing much glare in this photo, but trust us, the label says “Crystal Lite Roof”.

On the rear flanks, the engine is identified as a “24 Valve V6 3000″.

However, this plethora of badging would not be complete without one last item. Here’s Ben and Dan vandalizing the Space Gear with a JNC sticker.

JNC representin’ Tokyo!

Sayonara, Tokyo, it’s been a blast. Thanks to all our friends, old and new, for showing us around and guiding us through nostalgic car heaven! Jya-ne… For all you JNC readers, we’ll see you stateside.

No, we haven’t come to an untimely death by offending the wrong yakuza lieutenant, accidentally driving down the wrong side of the wangan, or eating ill-prepared fugu. Much to the chagrin of some, we are very much alive, but our last day in Japan was largely uneventful. We spent our single day of downtime meeting up with friends, collecting JDM brochures and getting fingerprints all over the cars at Toyota’s Amlux showroom in Ikebukuro and Nissan’s showroom in Ginza.

Amlux is a 10 minute walk from the JR Ikebukuro station. Exit on the Seibu side. You have to cross under an elevated highway to get to it, so this is the best exterior shot we could manage.

Six stories of Toyota goodness.

The Nostalgic Car set of R/C vintage Skylines at a Japanese Toys R Us.

Nissan’s Ginza showroom. Beware, weary traveler, for there are two Ginza showrooms. This, the smaller one, is near the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line station. It’s only big enough to house two cars and a gift shop.

The GT-R on display with the Intima concept.

The engine room of the starship Enterprise.

For some reason, you can buy Nissan Heritage Collection goods there.

This is the real showroom, which is a 10 minute walk or a quick shuttle bus ride away. Blade Runner on the outside…

… Logan’s Run on the inside.

Ben stinking up the GT-R. This is the first one we’ve seen in person that wasn’t silver. Red looks mighty purdy on this beast.

In Japan, white taxis (usually with blue stripe) are privately owned. This cabbie clearly loves his Cima (Infiniti Q45). We wanted to jump in and and say, “To Yokohama, stat!” just to see how quickly he’d get us there.

We went to sample some local fare with our friend Kats. Unfortunately, he didn’t tell us that one of the fares was beef colon soup from the Kyushu region. In case you’re wondering, it’s gamy, chewy, and not something we’d order again. Fortunately, we had several pints of smooth, delicious Suntory beer to wash it down. JNC: sampling the beef colon so you don’t have to!

Not beef colon.

Today we headed out to the Chainan 21, the official museum of Hino.

Check out this sign. The station name is Toyoda, and if you notice, the previous stop was Hino. Coincidence? Probably. The Hino museum is at neither of these.

Instead, it’s in Hachiouji, about a 40 minute train ride west of Shinjuku, but from the train station you also have to take a taxi or bus.

As a result, the place was deserted. Unlike the rest of Japan, there were no greeters, no people sitting behind a desk in the lobby, not even anyone at the gift shop counter. Just this Star Trek-esque elevator with pictures of dolphins in it.

It was a small museum. Nothing on the scale of the Honda Collection Hall, Toyota Museum, or Nissan Zama warehouse. A lot of this probably has to do with the fact that most of Hino’s products are enormous trucks. There were plenty of pictures though. Unfortunately, all the placards were in Japanese with very few English translations.

Hino made airplane engines long before their current lineup of trucks and buses.

Somewhere in between there was a car or two.

On the way back we stopped by the Subaru showroom in Shinjuku.

No nostalgics inside, but there was a new Forester and a dark brown “Bitter Edition” R2. The Japanese can never have too many limited editions.

Shinjuku by night.

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!

The time has come! It’s a cold but clear morning. Here’s the beautiful skyline of Odaiba, where the New Year Meeting is held, from the Yurikamome monorail. We have a ton of pictures, but here’s just the ones we had time to upload. We woke up at 5AM to bring these to you, so you better appreciate it!

Cars pulling into the show.

The parking lot is worth a look in itself.

Suzuki Owner’s Club

A pair of bitchin’ Toyotas

Publica Owner’s Club

Mooneyes‘ pair of 1JZ-powered Crowns

Ben hanging out with Goshu from Mooneyes

Hino Contessa Club

Skyline GT-R Owner’s Club

Isuzu 117 Coupes

Hangin’ out with the Cosmo Sports Owner’s Club during a brief moment of downtime.

A pair of 800cc sportsters

More Subarus

An awesome kenmeri Skyline badged as a Datsun 240K

Skylines, including one in rare wagon form, from Victory 50

Skyline DR30 Club

Fairlady S30Z Club

A row of Silvias

More Nissan goodness

Rocky Auto’s booth

Rims for sale

Sayonara for now. It’s 7:30AM now and we’re headed out for another day.

We took NWA, but the food wasn’t very good. If you have a choice, we recommend Public Enemy Air.

Our man in Japan Satoshi picked us up in his slammed 1995 Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear Super Exceed. It’s got 0 bump stops, 2 tones, 3 fewer inches in ride height, and 5 sunroofs.

Here’s Dan doing the Akabou mascot pose next to a Subaru Sambar kei-sized delivery kei truck.

After a quick ramen meal, we went to the apartment where we’ll be staying, and we’re about to pass out. It’s already morning in the US, and we’ve been awake about 24hrs. We’ve reserved a rental car for tomorrow, and we’re headed out to Tochigi and Honda’s Twin Ring Motegi. Wonder what rental we’re gonna get! Good night.

One of things we can never wrap our heads around is the fact that in Japan, it’s already tomorrow. By the time you read this, we’ll be crossing the International Date Line in a 747 headed to J-land to meet up with friends, slurp down bowls of delicious ramen, and most of all, to see the 2008 New Year Meeting, the largest classic car show of the year. Oh joy of joys! We can hardly contain ourselves. If we don’t succumb to an adrenaline overdose, jetlag, or dehydration via excessive salivating, we’ll bring you updates – from the future! Stay tuned to this blog. We also have a few other surprises for you, including the private warehouse of a certain manufacturer. Tee hee! For coverage of the 2007 New Year Meeting, click here.