Reply With QuoteThere is that 7 Drive thing were you can do the inital D roads in a choice of cars. Not done it but it looks interesting.
JAPAN TRIP
So I just booked myself some flights to Japan and am seeing if many people on here have been there, looking forsome ideas on cool things to do and places to visit, good experiences with hotels etc etc.
I did a quick search on here but my phone didn't turn up many results in the forum search.
At this stage my rough planning is to arrive in Tokyo on 3rd nov in the morning, head straight down to Osaka for 5 or so days, then Kyoto for about the same with a day trip to Hiroshima in between. Then around 12-13th head up to ebisu with a missile to skid and do matsuri on 14-15th then after that venture back to to Tokyo for the last 6days of my trip.
That's just a rough guide I'm playing with ATM.
So yeah any ideas/info/'must see/visit' would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Ps excuse any spelling/grammar errors, my phone is a potato and can't keep up with my typing and freezes etc lol
There is that 7 Drive thing were you can do the inital D roads in a choice of cars. Not done it but it looks interesting.
dude, that is so awesome.. ive been wanting to go to japan for some time now.. i will go one day. best of luck to you there. cheers and bring back photos and videos
Uhhhh, you still looking for info? I just got back from Japan this month. I know I'm a little late but I never come to this bit of the forum.
Happiest place in the world!
And some pictures for the car nerds.
GT500 engine
I'll write you out a more detailed reply when I'm on a computer.
Last edited by Skylar; 31st May 2014 at 01:45 AM.
Ill be over there for matsuri
yeah skylark going in Nov
Me too Jacobxxx, looking into getting a missile to destroy there
So, places you want to go:
asakusa - Feels like a festival every day. Real sweet for buying souvenir-ey gifts. It's a temple complex with kaminarimon as the entrance which leads you through the matsuri (matsuri means festival and asakusa really feels like a proper Japanese festival although a matsuri would have some point of celebration rather than just stalls for tourists) shopping isle then you get to the pagoda and the buddhist temple (don't confuse these with shinto shrines) as well as a few other traditional buildings. If you look to the right, you can see the skytree pretty well.
Odaiba - I sound like 'one of the crowd' saying this but odaiba is probably my favourite place. The pictures above are from the car museum there (megaweb). There's also a toyota showroom there and if you get there early enough, with an international license, you can test drive a new toyota and lexus's too if I remember correctly. Marx X, IS350 or century would be my pick. There's a 86 specialist section there too. There's a biiiig 'gaming centre' when you get to the other side of the showroom where I spent way too much trying to nab a second hello kitty plush toy. and playing D1 arcade game. haha. Take a walk through venusfort, even if you don't do any shopping, it's pretty cool looking. Fuji television studio - If you've watched the first season of digimon adventure, you'll recognise the building otherwise it just's a ball jammed into a building and pretty cool looking. There's aqua city/decks, mediage and divercity shopping arcades/centres you can spend a bunch of time in. We had dinner in decks IIRC at an all you can eat joint overlooking tokyo bay and tokyo. Super nice place. There's the 1:1 rx78 gundam model if you're into that sorta stuff, but it's way cool nonetheless. If you continue two more station along the rinkai line, you can go to Super-autobacs. There's also legoland and a madam tussaud's wax museum as well.
Go to Disneyland too. and if you're not disney'ed out, go to Disney Sea as well. I reckon Disney Sea is more grand than Disneyland. Spent the whole day there and still didn't get to see the whole place or even go on a boat ride.
If you're into studio ghibli films, there's a Ghibli museum you can visit in Mitaka.
If you're into anime, there's a 7 story 'animate' store in ikebukuro. Mate wanted to go so we checked it out, I didn't rate it. But if you go there, my mate's restaurant is just opposite if you want to try Okinawa food. For anime stuff, I prefer asobit city in akihabara. There's a kotobukiya as well in aki. There's a bunch of anime and gaming merchandise for sale in just the yodobashi camera stores alone. There's something like 14 yodobashi shops in shinjuku each specialising in their own sector, cameras, watches, multimedia, gaming and figures including plastic models (<-feels so wrong saying this, feel like I should type puramoderu) of gundam and eva as well as fujimi and other model cars.
Shinjuku is good but I can't really say go 'here'. I just get off the train and walk around there and find stuff. Been there so many times I still find new areas I haven't visited before. There's cool buildings all over the place. If anything, go to tokyo hands (big ass (6 stories) hardware/homewares store) in takashimaya square.
Akihabara's full of maid cafes and annoying bastards that come up and talk to you and try to get you to come their cafe. Y'all foreigners would probably not get bothered. But it's not like it used to be, "electric town", full of electronics and specialised shops. If you wanted anything you could get it there.
There's the big crossing in shibuya if you want to check that out. I don't really know much about shibuya other than that the big tokyu hands store is there. All sortsa trendy shops around there. (young people hang out)
Meiji jingu is a famous shinto shrine one stop (?) from memory, away from shibuya if you want to check that out. It's at harajuku. The other side of the track is a total young person hang out. The Eva store is there if you want to check it out.
Takao mountain is about an hour's train ride from shinjuku if you want to go climb a little mountain (600m). The terrain will look pretty sweet in autumn with all sortsa different colours. Go up route six and come down route 4. Route 4 looks dangerous as hell but you get some nice views.
I'm into hotrods a little bit so I went down to the Mooneyes store and had lunch at mooneyes cafe next door. On the way back, I went to the nissan global headquarters in Yokohama and went to their showroom as well. There's a JGTC R32 on display there which I had a good look at as well as their current lineup, including a titan (America truck (ute)).
That was about me for the last trip. I went to a few other places but probably not of interest to you guys.
Osaka's cool. The shopping district is underground and the city above ground is like office towers I found. I wasn't there long so I can't really comment. I spent a day in Nara and a day in Kyoto. I'd recommend going to Nara for a day and going to toudaiji. Nara's much smaller in comparison to Kyoto. With Kyoto, you want to pick your destinations and plan it out, it's a big place and there's lots to see, rokuonji, kinkakuji, nijijo, sanjyusangendo, ginkakuji to name a few. But once you see a few, it starts to look similar unless you get right into it. Like this place here was built when this guy split to concentrate on the zen sect of buddhism whereas this place is a different sect and had money thrown at it, etc. I wanted to go and have a walk through the forrest at the north east but I didn't have the time, or maybe that was Nara. The city itself has a different feel to tokyo cities as well so you could probably spend a few days just walking around the city itself as well.
On your way over to hiroshima, stop over at kurashiki. I haven't really left tokyo much but I remember going there as kid and it's a I remember it being real old-timey. I guess you could get the same at a lot of places but I remember that it was had a really old and historic feel to it. I guess if you're going to hiroshima, you're gonna go to the bomb site? I remember going to another museum around there but not much else. Although, I remember a guy had a RC boat in this water feature thing and being amazed at that. lol. and eating bullet train bento.
Oh, initial D might be on at the cinemas. Comes out august 23rd.
If you want any info or advice on getting around, let me know.
Also, it would make more sense for you to fly into kansai international airport instead of getting to narita/haneda and then getting on a train for 2.5 hours when you can just fly there instead. The airport fees there are cheaper than haneda too.
I'll make sure to write few of these out in a notepad haha, cheers mate!!
Just got back from japan was an awesome trip, Skylars post ^ is pretty damn good actually did most of that.
landed in Osaka (kansai) had 3 days there, Highly recommend Universal studios theme park if your into that thing. was a full day out but was awesome well worth the money. Did all the touristy things while in osaka (imperial palace, dotonbori, etc etc) 3 days was probably enough..
took the train to Kyoto next, was there for 2 days. First thing i did was goto AE86 land (ae86 speciality shop) was sick seeing heaps of sprinters sitting around. hired bikes and rode around the city, visited all the temples and shrines etc etc, kyotos a "pretty" place
took bullet train to tokyo, had 5 days there, Went absolutely everywhere i could, while in Akihabara went into a "club sega" arcade and top floor they had the new initial D stage 8 there. for $1 a turn i spent quite alot of $$ there lol
Also went to disney sea, my opinion not as good as universal studios but a good day out anyways.
Odaiba's definitely worth a visit, full sized gundam statue, theres a statue of liberty, if you go into the "docks" centre theres sega joypolis (along with wax mesuem, lego land(but you need to have a kid to enter) etc etc.. in Joypolis they have initial D arcade stage 4 set up and you get to pick either a ae86, RX7 or WRX and you play initial d inside the cars as they are moving.. pretty cool you can either buy a pass for the whole joypolis or initial d is only $6 a turn.
Went over to megaweb as well.had a really good look around and free to get into.
Also went to the Yokohama UPGarage... MUST VISIT!!! superauto bacs had nothing on upgarage. about a 20min train ride (if you catch the express) out of tokyo
will put up some pics below... did heaps more so any questions just ask.
Last edited by smackdown.exe; 30th June 2014 at 04:52 PM.
I never venture out of tokyo. I'd have to pay real money for accomodation if I did. lol.
Did you get hassled by the maid cafe girls in akihabara?
I forgot to mention kiyomizudera in kyoto. Pretty cool place. They've been doing this traditional festival for something like 1300 years in this same building. I only remembered when watching Infinite Stratos. (There's also an episode where they go to Venus Fort in odaiba, it's worth popping your head in there if only to take a look at the place and see the giant hall thing at the end. It's right next to megaweb.)
Just a little correction, the place is called 'decks'. But how the hell did I miss that initial simulator thing? How was the sitting-in-cars-game thing? There was a similar thing but it was just a pod that was hung from above and acutuated.
Yeah, superautobacs wasn't amazing. Will have to head to yokohama next time and have a look around the city and go for a tour through the Nissan factory. Did you take the shonan-shinjuku line or take some line out of shinagawa?
Posting Permissions