Star Road

When I was in high school, I studied Spanish like most folks in California. It comes in handy often in daily life, so it was a good choice. However, for my senior year, I decided to switch to Japanese. That choice changed my life.

Okayama City (岡山市) in Okayama Prefecture (岡山県) is a “sister city” of my hometown: San Jose, California. My high school had a homestay program with a high school in Okayama that would give their students a week in California and a visit to our school, and we would visit Japan for a week and visit their school. Not only is this already an incredible experience that everyone should have, a few of my good friends were also studying Japanese and we would all go together.

Most young people have no idea what they want to do with their life, and of course I was no different. When I boarded the plane for this trip just after my 18th birthday in March 2005, I didn’t even know what my college major would be. After going on this trip, I decided to major in Japanese. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do, but that amazing country had made such an impression that I knew I had to be involved with it somehow.

Unfortunately, it took graduating in 2009 during a terrible economic recession to realize there was no future down the path I had chosen. I didn’t get into the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program and all of my career prospects were underwhelming. I abandoned the Japanese dream and focused on my other love: cars. I’ve had a great career doing all kinds of car-related things, but I’ve never forgotten about Japan.

In the years since that initial trip, despite–or perhaps due to?–having traveled through most of the United States, plus Canada, England, and even Korea for work purposes, I never made it back to Japan. Every year I was either too poor, or didn’t have the time, or I didn’t have anyone to go with, or some other stupid excuse.

Well, I am proud to report that I finally did it. This post comes one day after I have returned from my latest trip to Japan, 21 years after that first trip. Before I talk about the trip I’m still jet-lagged from, I’d like to share photos from my first trip to give some context. The 2026 trip made me remember why I fell in love with Japan in the first place. So before I share that story, I would like to recall why I fell in love with it back in 2005.

I went to Japan so long ago you could play SNES on the plane.

Known as the Nintendo Gateway System, it was a modified version of a Nintendo console made for airplanes and hotel rooms. They even had N64 and GameCube!

I was amazed by everything I saw and took photos of every seemingly-mundane thing, from the hot towel we got on the plane to the currency exchange. I’m glad I got a photo of these cool green payphones which are a complete relic these days. The “old guy” in the photos is our teacher, Hall-sensei. As I write this at age 39, it’s hilarious to remember that at age 18, I thought a 35 year old dude was old.

We flew into Narita Airport which is in the northern part of Honshu, the main island of Japan. Our destination was Kyoto which is near the southern part, and to get there we took a series of trains.

The trip was made even better by traveling with a great group. Even after an 11 hour flight and multiple train rides, we were still laughing.

There were so many things I discovered on this trip that I had never seen or even heard of. A bicycle parking garage??

We got in at night but were restless so we decided to take a walk. All of these flyers were completely gone by the time we came back the next day.

Of course, I was up early the next morning. I love how the shrines and temples coexist with the modern city of Kyoto.

The other draw for taking Japanese was that Hall-sensei also ran the Juggling Club at school, which was super fun. Of course we had to bring along our juggling props. On a photo note, all of these photos were taken on my Sony DSC-W1 and are all straight out of camera with no editing.

Then we went to Kyoto Station, which blew my mind.

Of course, being 17-18 year old boys, we weren’t going to just take the escalator. We were going to tough out the stairs!

It was late March, so unfortunately the sakura (cherry blossoms) hadn’t bloomed yet, but maybe that’s a good thing if it kept the crowds down.

I was amazed at the juxtaposition between modern storefronts and ancient looking architecture.

In San Jose there’s a “Japanese Friendship Garden” so I had gotten a taste of Japanese design, but for the most part I had never seen anything like this. This is a place called Sanjuusangen-dou (“Thirty-Three Ken Hall” [a ken is an ancient unit of measure]), a temple that was built in 1164. Inside, there are 1001 statues of Kannon (a goddess); I think there were no photos allowed inside because I don’t have any.

Then we went to Kiyomizu-dera (“Pure Water Temple”), another temple. This place is epic, featuring 15 structures that are collectively designated “Important Cultural Properties” in Japan. Most of them were built in the Edo period (1600’s) but some of them were built in the Muromachi Period (14-1500’s).

These photos are just unedited point-and-shoot snapshots by a young version of myself, so the quality isn’t great. But I love them anyway because they are such a great snapshot–pun intended–of this moment in my life.

This spot is always pretty busy with tourists. This photo was taken on a Tuesday; I wonder what it’s like on a weekend or holiday.

Next we went to another very famous temple in Kyoto, Kinkaku-ji (“Temple of the Golden Pavilion”).

Sometimes you just want to stand and admire the sound of water hitting a rock.

I loved the wooden signs. Remember Legend of Zelda? Even the No Smoking sign looks cool.

I love how there are vending machines everywhere, even at ancient sites. Apparently there are more vending machines than people in Japan, similar to how there are more firearms or hamburger patties than people in the USA.

Speaking of burgers; out of a mixture of familiarity and curiosity, we had to try McDonald’s.

It appears that Chris got the “Teritama”, or the Teriyaki burger with egg (tamago). I got the “Biggu Makku” (Big Mac) which I recall tasting exactly the same as back home. On my 2026 trip I tried some teriyaki burger and it was awful. At least the fries were good.

We went to Nijou-jou (Nijo Castle). We were getting quite the whirlwind tour of epic Kyoto architecture.

I loved touring the castle grounds and gardens.

I wasn’t yet a railfan, but I think anyone can appreciate the sight of a Shinkansen train heading into the station.

I wonder what the owner of this Nissan Wingroad was like, with their “Fuck tha police” and Playboy stickers.

It was time to go to school! We got some song and dance performances from them, then we performed. On our side some of us, myself included, did juggling routines.

This Nissan Cefiro was the first time I saw a Japanese tuner car and thought “What is THAT” and “That is so cool”. Gran Turismo had opened up a wide world of weird Japanese cars and yet there was still much more out there to discover.

With our whole group of American and Japanese students combined, we headed to Kouraku-en, one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan.

Of course we had to go next door to see Okayama Castle.

I kept seeing things I had never seen before. From buildings older than the founding of the country I came from to mechanized parking garages, Japan had such an interesting past and seemed to be already living in the future, with both sides coexisting right next to each other.

Everybody had a homestay partner and we stayed at their house. This were the little brothers of my homestay partner, and of course I had to show them my juggling stuff! Check out that 2005-era gaming setup. Amusingly from a modern perspective, having an LCD like that was hot shit back in those days when most of us still played on CRT’s.

I loved Final Fantasy back then. This was the first time I had heard of the updated Japanese version of FFVII called “Final Fantasy VII International”.

This taxi yard was pretty impressive to me, and of course filled with JDM sedans I had never seen before.

On this day we went over to Hiroshima. This is the Genbaku-domu, or Atomic Bomb Dome, which is now a memorial. This was the only building left standing at ground zero of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945.

We went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. This place doesn’t pull any punches showing the brutality of the bombing. This section showed a recreation of victims stumbling through rubble with their skin melting off.

We tend to think of the atomic bombings as necessary to stop a fascist country that was aligned with the Nazis, but the museum gives a perspective on the brutality of it from their perspective. It’s such a shame what it did to so many civilians.

Back out on the streets of Hiroshima…hey is that an R32 GT-R?

Mitsubishi Delica with dished wheels and fat tires.

We did some bowling. I suppose nothing was particularly “Japanese” about this but it is a fun group activity.

Japanese bowling shoes are pretty neat though!

I was a bit more interested in the arcade, like this Sogeki machine (the Japanese version of Silent Scope EX).

We went down to the river which was once again like nothing I had ever seen.

No ugly guardrail or any other health-and-safety intrusions here.

This was an interesting game that was kind of like air hockey meets laser tag.

We went to Kobe. What a sweet variety of cars. The Toyota Estima with a bit of a body kit and flared front fenders; the Jaguar XJ; but most of all the perfectly posted Nissan Pulsar GTI-R!

I didn’t take many car photos for some reason. This R33 snap was probably the best one I got.

This is one of my all-time favorite pieces of Engrish. In Japanese, “fax” is fakkusu (ファックス) which is exactly the same way the word “fucks” is pronounced and written.

This is Ikuta-jinja, or Ikuta Shrine. The difference between a temple (as we had mostly seen so far) and a shrine is that temples are Buddhist and shrines are Shinto. This is one of the oldest shrines in Japan; it was originally built in 799 and restored a few times since then.

Wow, that week flew by. Before I knew it, we were saying goodbye to the homestay girls as we boarded our train headed back to Narita Airport.

That trip blew my mind. I already loved Japanese cars, video games, music, and food; on this trip I fell in love with their culture and language. The people were so kind and welcoming; people were so excited to hear us speak their language, which made me want to learn it even more.

It’s a bit embarrassing to admit that after my initial trip to Japan, I didn’t return for another 21 years. But I am very glad that last fall, my good friend Stefan hit me up and asked if I wanted to go to a metal music festival with him. I looked at the flyer; was this real? This show is in Shinjuku… “Yeah dude! Let’s go to Japan!” was the response. How could I say no?

After so many years of procrastination and excuses, it was time! Stay tuned: the next post is all about my awesome 2026 visit to Japan.