Decorated like Christmas

I feel the need to post the slightly weird part of Japanese car culture and its not necessarily a car. In Japan semi truck drivers create works of art on their trucks, which is called "Dekorta" or (decoration truck) but they take it to the extreme by adding massive amounts of neon lights to the exterior and interior of the truck, painting the trucks with elaborate paint jobs, and chrome parts anywhere they see fit. Some of them almost look like transformers from a distance, which makes sense because some of them base their designs off of it.

Aaahhhhh, GODZILLA!

You can't even begin to talk about Japanese car culture with mentioning the most influential Japanese car in the world, which happens to be the Nissan Skyline GT-R. Nicknamed Godzilla by an Australian car magazine, it has dominated Japan motorsports winning 29 straight of 29 races.

Never manufactured outside of Japan, the Skyline GT-R was only exported to Australia and the United Kingdom. The older model GT-R's are rare in United States considering that Nissan never produced a Skyline GT-R to comply with the United States Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, until 2008 where they released the R35 GT-R worldwide. 

Some of the things that makes this car so unique is its all-wheel drive system and four-wheel steering. It also remains somewhat inexpensive for its class.

JDM Paradise

As with many car enthusiasts, they all want to find a group that tailors to their similar taste in automobiles.
What better place to meet up and show off your car than a huge parking lot, right?
Well, the Daikoku Parking Area is known as one the best JDM(Japanese Domestic Market) meeting areas in Japan, compared to Shibaura parking area, and Tatsumi parking area. JDM enthusiasts of all makes and models come to show-off their cars that they tuned for performance and style.

via speedhunters.com

Drift World

To start off, I want to introduce you to one of the most popular motorsports craze in Japan, which is also catching on in America and through out the whole world. Drifting! It came into fruition as a technique, when rally car drivers would slide or drift around corners through various road conditions. It also allowed drivers to maintain a high speed when turning.

The technique was picked up by Japanese drivers who had to maneuver a series of mountain turns. Drivers soon challenged each other, seeing who could maneuver the turns with more flare. From there drivers developed their own style and the sport was born.

Today, drivers compete on closed streets courses more than mountainous roads and champion drifters are recognized as celebrities in Japan.

Team Orange Triple Drift from The SpeedHunters on Vimeo.