I Love Japan
私は日本を愛する
Those figures, according to my good friend Billy Google, translate to “I love Japan”. I really want to take a trip to the land of the rising sun. In my head, visiting Tokyo is like traveling into the future. My wife hates large crowds so this can be a “guy trip”.
The minute that Hooniverse.com sells some ad space, we are taking a trip to Japan. In the meantime, hop the jump for this random video I found via Reddit.com. It features cars like the one above…though not parked, but moving down the highway! Keep an eye out for extra weirdness at the two minute mark.
You can’t tell me it wouldn’t be fun to drive one of those things down the road. It would be weird…but it would be fun too.
I’ll race you to the nearest karaoke bar.
For more fun, try this one (hit play on both of them but mute the right one):
[Lead Photo courtesy of EpicJag]
| YouTube Doubler |
[Lead Photo courtesy of EpicJag]
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<img src="http://hiphopwired.wordpress.com/files/2009/12/xzibit-wtf.jpg" width="741" height="487" />
"Yo dawg I heard you…um…er…damn. I got nuthin'."
"Yo Dawg, I heard you was piping' about laying some pipe, so I got out my pipe to get you two more pipes to put onto the end of your pipes!
This is my first and absolutely my final attempt at this meme.
I had a summer of fun immediately after I quit selling BMWs. I was single, I had money to burn, and I burnt it good. In October 08 I had just returned from Germany, pondering where to go next, and I realised that I hadn't been to a motor show that year. A look at the calendar revealed that the next London or Birmingham show was deep into 2009, but the Japan one was in a fortnights time.
So I jumped on a Cathay Pacific. 18 hours later I was in the finest country I had ever visited. It was dark when I walked to my hotel in Ginza, and the journey had been like being lost on the set of Bladerunner. Tokyo is the most bewildering place I have ever visited, where at 6'5" I'm a colossus and barely fit on board a commuter train. I must have looked like a mental person, with my head spinning around constantly to take in a new sound here, a new sight there. That crazy film with Sean Connery and a Vector didn't seem all that far fetched.
And the cars, even the most mundane, are somehow exotic. I feel myself yearning for a Nissan Leopard, a Mitsubishi Pike, a Daihatsu Midget or a Honda Beat. Who knew that you could, in the '80s, buy a Nissan Gloria station wagon with woodgrain trim? Mostly I want a Toyota Century with lace seat covers.
Back to today, plane tickets have exploded in price and it's hard to see how I might get my next fix of the orient. Everything depends on convincing my girlfriend that a trip out there is more important than food and a house to live in.
Tokyo is awesome in the weirdest way….
I like the Bladerunner comparison. Never occurred to me. I was there for a few days on business in 07 and stayed in the Ginza district. Wandering around at night it would not have surprised me to see cars fly by above me. The streets seemed just as busy at 2 in the morning as they were at 2 in the afternoon. Crazy place. And I especially liked the taxis with the power rear door, lace seat covers and capped and gloved drivers. Nice to see cab drivers taking pride in what they do…we don't seem to have that in Toronto.
That was the thing that really struck me, how much pride everyone had. Take a train, there's a controller on the platform wearing white gloves and holding a pocketwatch, he will blow his whistle for the train to start On The Dot, without fail. The kids waiting for the train, in their crisp school uniforms, they're not climbing, shouting, throwing or spitting, they're standing in quiet conversation or reading a book.
When I came home I summed up the difference between Japan and the UK; Here, we do things as well as they need to be done. In Japan, they do things as well as they can be done.
I love this trend – I'm trying to imagine the North American equivalent, applied to a Crown Victoria. I mean, I've got rear suspension jacked up like three feet, perhaps absurdly ostentatious flames (covering the entire car, I guess), perhaps 4 side pipes on each side of the car…
A Caprice Classic Wagon fully wrapped in tubes of exhaust, and the only way in is through the moon-roof
Nani shiteru no??
most bewildering thing in the first video is the unmolested classics that show up at one point.
I'm always amazed by the dichotomy of the ultra strict laws they have in Japan and the crazy stuff you can get done there, apparently within the law.
I hope to have a similar experience in a certain BMW on a certain "strip" of road after a certain giant automotive trade shop later this year.
I will never understand Japanese culture and I'm okay with that. I appreciate their enthusiasm even when it makes me cringe.
in case you skanks didn't know… in the jungle, the mighty jungle (yeah, that one), the lion sleeps tonight.
For some reason this popped into my head:
Cletus: Looky here! Cardy-board tubes!
Brandine: Now we can have indoor plumbing, just like they's got at the womens' lockup.
Cletus: They spoilt you, Brandine. Sometimes I don't even know who you are anymore.
Also, speaking of NACA ducts, number one best duct 100% at 4:25.
And finally, for the car at 3:47, I only have one thing to say:
PikaCHUUUUUUUUUUUU!
<img src="http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y66/mikebox/pikachu22small.jpg">