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[Greg S]

We had a great time in Japan. Not a ton to do as we were in Takikawa in central Hokkaido, which is farming country. Lots of rice fields this time of year and not much else. My in-laws have no computer and there was only one WiFi connection in the area and it was password protected. It was fun visiting the family and the girls got time to spend with their cousin, even went to her school for one afternoon. It's always pretty interesting to be the only non-Japanese person in town when we visit. Needless to say I get stared at quite a bit. We spent some time a day at one of the city parks with Miho's parents, sister, brother-in-law, and niece. This place was enormous, it had a 5 story play gym for the kids with climbing ropes, ladders, slides, and a built in trampoline. There is also a massive jungle gym on the grounds, a reduced copy of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, massive koi pond/lake, wilderness play area, tons of walking trails through the grass and woods, and a large picnic area. We also let the kids light of some fireworks, or hanabe. It's a summer tradition to just light fireworks in the summer evenings. Also went to one of the neighboring cities for a my niece's badminton competition, she washed out early on but at 11 it was expected, she was playing kids 2-3 years her senior. It's always fun to see a gym entrance filled with shoes, eved in the gyn you take off your outside shoes and put clean indoor ones on. There were also the ever present vending machines with everything from soda and juices to coffee, beer, hot meals, noodles, and cigarettes.

Miho and I to a day to go down to Sapporo proper for sightseeing. It was nice to see it without snow for me. We've always gone in winter and while the Ice Festival is beautiful with the ice sculptures lining the central park you can imagine how cold it is for them to stay up for a whole month without melting each Feburary.

Lucky for me I also discovered a car show on the last weekend we were there. It was a two day event with a glow off the first night and a normal show the next day. We only made the glow-off as we had the park plans for the next day but it was great to see. It's a 15 year old event called the North Japan Custom Festival held in an amusement park call Greenland.

Of course we took a ton of pictures and they are below. I'm not doing any comments because there are just too many but you can figure most of them out easily enough.

We also picked up a nice little Sony HD camcorder and I took videos of the show but I haven't had time to edit or host them yet, they will follow later. I also discovered some nice store to get mini cars in. Basically they have little matchbox style cars from Tomiya as well as slightly larger and smaller ones that are pull back cars as well as a few micro sizes ones. My brother-in-law was able to score me some Toyota dealer only Rumion models as well.

I'll start the pics with the cars and let the rest follow.




Family and other normal vacation stuff












































General cars














































One sick bB









The ever present Boso vans


















Semi old-scool Civic





Honda Fit with some serious tuck






99-05 Honda Legreat (Honda Odyssey here) with just a little camber








The one and only Rumion. I've got more on this in the videos that are coming.



And a very nice Toyota Wish, no US equivilant for this.






That's all for now.

[AMINAL8]

WOW!!!!!
I really need to go to Japan. I really want to see all of this in person.

[masterB]

very cool!

[PhatxB]

Looks like I have some competition in lighting. lol There are some amazing cars there. WOW, that was cool.

[Liesjemt]

It was funny seeing a Japanese car w American cartoons on it

I wish we had big playgrounds like that around here

[MONSTERSCION]

I dig the civic with the cali style paint and billit wheels

[Greg S]

Finally editted the videos down to two large files. These show some better detail than the pics.