OriginalWheelman wrote:
Yes. For the most part, the Japanese people are honorable. The embarrassment of the non-conforming sticker is prolly more or a punishment to the people than the fines.
Have you been here before? I'm sorry to say but this positive stereotype of the Japanese I've found to be quite the opposite after living here for quite some time. Depends on who you deal with though, but it is in no way like everyone seems to think it is. Believe me I could go on for hours about apalling experiences I've had/seen with peoples' behavior here. And as far as the sticker, I don't think many of them care about that so much as having to make the car conform within two weeks.
In regards to the people saying the cops are just being d!ck. While deaths and horrid crashes are rather rare in the car culture in the US (I use the word rare loosely), it is not so the case here. On a weekly basis you'll see a fully totaled, and i mean front of car in different location on the road totaled, cars on a weekly basis on the C1. To illustrate what i mean, please check out my friend's video he made when we went out on Christmas.
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=UU_v1SEXrYo
please note 6:30 on the video to see an S14 who ate it into a wall. The cops are getting sick of it inside Tokyo and want to stop the frequency of the racing and crashes. They don't have much other crimes to solve and the power ranger cops are sort of dedicated to just roads so they have nothing else to do on top of that.
In my post I didn't plan for people to take the $10k as the average fine these cars face. Keep in mind that was the maximum extreme from what I was hearing. Like if you resisted the cops, tried to stop them from inspecting, and your car failed almost every point of shaken compliance. The goal of the cops was to decrease the amount of people racing through the highways at night causing crashes. If you were civil about the process, they weren't being rude and rather helpful if you acted..acted, like you wanted to get your car to conform.
But its not like where they care about swaps or mods, many/most mods avail here are compliant, if you dont use them incorrectly. For example I put a test pipe in so that was an obvious no no but say a HKS 2530 turbo kit on your GTR is A OK(pretty sure).
For what Neal was saying about the track events. It really depends which track you go to. $180 is on the steep end but it's probably cause it's on the famed Fuji Speedway. Smaller tracks like Mobara or Nikko are closer to $80-$150. In Option magazine, they have a section near the back called sokokai or something like that, meaning driving meet where they list all the events for the month in all the tracks in Japan with prices, what type of driving (drift, grip, lessons) and whether its a comp or not. I made a small vid when my friend came and visited in Jan at mobara where I have the beginning part of the vid showing that page
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=oVRzk2uvttg
Cars are expensive to own in Japan, if you're in Tokyo or surrounding areas(I'm in Yokohama and Neal's in Saitama just slightly north of Tokyo). Just like it's expensive to own in Manhattan or downtown San fran. Places like Gunma, Tochigi, car culture is bigger there cause parking is usually free, at your house, shaken can be done by yourself easier (only $600 max then), etc.
