Star Road

When planning this trip to Japan, I knew this wasn’t a “car guy” trip, but there were still a few specific car-related activities I wanted to do. One of them was simply to attend a casual car meet in Tokyo. Probably the most famous of these would be the gatherings held at two different parking areas located in Tokyo Bay: Daikoku and Tatsumi. The major snag with those meets is that they are only accessible by car and taxis won’t pick you up there, so you need to drive yourself. This is a hassle as a tourist, because the meets are at night, meaning you need to find somewhere to park your (rental) car overnight–and virtually none of the hotels in Tokyo offer parking. Not the end of the world, but would it be worth the inconvenience?

The more I looked into it, the more it seemed like that answer was “no”. Not only did I keep finding post after post online about how the Daikoku night meet is no longer what it once was, with the car quality going down and tourist-in-rental quantity going up, but all of my friends who had recently been to Japan corroborated that with firsthand accounts. So how would I scratch my Japanese car meet itch? All of my problems were solved in one fell swoop: introducing the Shake Shack Gaien meet.

If you recall from my Thursday/Friday post, on Friday we visited the Meiji Jingu Shrine which is part of a huge park complex in Shinjuku. Near there is another park complex that features multiple stadiums and another huge park. “Gaien” means “outer park” and that is the area we visited on this lovely Sunday morning. And Shake Shack? Yep, the American fast food chain is there too.