One very unique Japan-ism is cosplay. That’s the practice of actually dressing up like a cartoon character and going out in public. Now, I’m not talking about dressing up as Sailor Moon for an anime convention….I mean dressing up as a cartoon character as a regular part of your weekend and going out. Doing something similar in any western city and you’ll feel very conspicuous within a few metres of your front door, but Japan is different.

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“When it’s relaxing time, make it…..Suntory Time” Ahh, one of my favourite movies.  But it reminded me the other day about Japan’s fascination with western celebrities. It seems that if you are a Hollywood movie star, you may be called to Japan at some time to sell seedless watermelons or washing machines or something.

And the car industry is certainly not immune.

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One of the nicest places to visit if you are in Tokyo and have time to kill, is the Toyota History Garage in Odaiba. It’s a small but high quality car museum, cafe and book/toy store.

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We thought we’d take a small break from the Hakosuka-only programming that we’ve been having for the past 2wks! When I was in Japan, I saw quite a few of these things, and you can see why they’re popular.

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If you go to Japan, one of the JDM institutions you need to pay a visit to is Tokyu Hands. Ostensibly it’s a department store, which seems hell bent on stocking pretty much everything: from hardware, to stationery, to toys and clothes, to luggage and much more besides. It’s a chain of very large stores all over Japan.

Where it gets interesting is the “much more besides” stuff they you will find there.

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We kinda alluded to it last week, but in Japan, heaps of people get around on bicycles.

That in itself is not so unusual…in Tokyo there are so many train stations and the various lines all criss-cross each other so much that you are never really that far from a station. So lots of people will ride their bikes to the station, and then take the train to work. But there certainly isn’t any room in a crowded JDM train….so what do they do with their bikes?

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One of the cool things that you will see plenty of in Tokyo is the BIG Scooter. Most of us are used to the idea of a scooter being a tiny little thing, pushed along by a putt-putt motor and with tiny wheels the diameter of frisbees.

But the Japanese do it quite differently, and in Japan you see plenty of low, long, fat scooters with big-cube thumper engines. They’re still twist n’ go automatic, but have a lot of presence and are extremely popular. And extremely popular for modifying.

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