Since the days of the Meiwa Era, Asakusa’s Senso-ji temple in downtown Tokyo has hosted “Hozuki Ichi” (Ground Cherry Lantern Festival), in the blistering heat of mid-July. According to legend, a young samurai’s apprentice dreamed that the Japanese horse-riding, goblin-slaying, deity of fire, Atago Gongen, revealed to him the medicinal powers of a Houzuki pod (ground cherry plant pod resembling a Chinese paper lantern). The next morning, while cleaning the garden of Shiba-Seishoji Temple he found such a ground cherry plant pod and recalled the dream from the night before. He proclaimed that if one were to eat an unripe ground cherry at Atago Shrine on June 24, the festival day for the Buddhist deity Jizo, they could be cured of any ailments and their children would be cured of distemper. Taking the young Samurai apprentice’s advice, many people promptly tried this on June 24, discovering that it was mysteriously effective, alleviating the fever and discomfort experienced by pregnant women, and thus began calling it a wonder medicine. This was the beginning of the Hozuki-ichi Festival that has continued for over 200 years.

Accordingly, the Atago festival has become quite popular and over the decades, many temples have also adopted their own Hozuki Ichi festivals. The festival in Asakusa at Sensoji has since become larger and more popular than the one in Atago. On July 9th and 10th, the latter of which is also Yonman-rokusennichi (Day of 46,000 Blessings), over 450 vendors arrive to sell Houzuki lantern plants while another 350 come to peddle typical festival fare. Visitors nowadays come in their summer yukata, to buy a Houzuki plant, also said to ward off evil spirits and goblins from their home. Glass furin wind chimes ring across the festival grounds, aiding the laid back attitude, which despite the humidity, makes it one of Tokyo’s more pleasant and peculiar summertime celebrations.

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“Serious sport is war minus the shooting.”

–G. B. Shaw

As one who believes geographical allegiances should be local rather than national and who has only the dilettante’s interest in competitive sports, I find the fanatical devotion characterizing the World Cup as amusing as the tournament itself. The World Cup produces intense feelings, which manifest themselves in a variety of aspects, including facial paint, lucky charms, bizarre costumes, wild inebriation and customized cheering. For most followers of the competition, the World Cup is an opportunity to feel a uniquely communal agony or levity, dependent on the outcome of a match to which the fan has had no part in, but who undergoes the winning or losing as if it were one’s own experience.

In Japan, this loyalty involved some ungodly match times due the time difference East Asia enjoys in relation to South Africa. When Japan advanced to the Round of 16 after defeating Denmark, 3 – 1, thousands of fans erupted into the streets to celebrate the victory. It was just after 5:00 AM on a muggy Friday morning and Hachiko Crossing, the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world, erupted in such pandemonium that the casual non-fan would be forgiven for believing that Japan defeated Brazil to win the tournament itself, rather than just the first of five rounds, a feat accomplished by fifteen other teams. Were such celebrations a spontaneous outburst born from low expectations? Was it a fit of pride, anomalous good news for a nation suffering through two decades of slow growth that has seen their economic cachet dwindling against China and other emerging East Asian markets? Or was it simply inevitable that thousands of young fans staying up all night drinking beer would want to get down and party when their team won?

To say the least, witnessing such an outburst in Japan is highly unusual for a culture famed for its social reticence. The Japanese may open themselves to others, but rarely do they thrust their joys so deliriously upon strangers. The peculiarly Japanese cartoon types— exuberant in blue superhero suits, Yukio Hatoyama gag masks, and bright blue afro wigs (blue being the team color)— worked the fans like deft cheerleaders, gathering crowds and stirring them into a frenzy. Thousands of people streaming from Shibuya’s teeming bars towards the central train station threw off their exhaustion to improvise a jig with strangers, actions they would view with bewilderment in more sober circumstances.

The atmosphere had that rare whiff of danger, as one might expect in an environment compounded by sleeplessness, alcohol, and a sports victory. Yet this danger did not seem so much physical as it did psychological. You could hear it being screamed and sung in wild cacophonous eruptions, “Nippon! Nippon! Nippon!”— a cry as aggressive as any outburst of “USA! USA! USA!” to those not given to national self-mythologizing. They say one man’s meat is another man’s poison; thus the peril, which sometimes requires the competitive energy of a sporting event to make evident, is nationalism.

Like nearly all countries, Japan has its share of right-wingers, nativists, and xenophobes. Though they are ostensibly a minority, their soapboxes and bullhorns, ubiquitous at train stations and embassies, mean they are politically loud. However, they seem to be a dying bunch, grumpy old men with long memories of losing a great war.

I was thus surprised then to witness Japan’s Imperial Flag brandished by a heap of twentysomething soccer fanatics. There it was billowing in the morning wind with all the suggestiveness of history dyed in the bright red rays emanating from a rising sun. You might call it beautiful if you didn’t know better but for those who do, it symbolizes Japan’s catastrophic attempt at empire: colonies in Manchuria and Korea, gory battles in Iwo Jima and Okinawa and of course, the apocalypses of Hiroshima and Nagasaki— the fluttering cloth becoming an object of collective pride for hundreds of young, intoxicated, impressionable young men.

But soccer teams, like governments, do not always succeed in what they set out to do. Promises cannot always be kept. Despite a plucky performance the Japanese team was eliminated from the tournament in a tense, hard-fought finish against Paraguay. Those fans screaming the loudest will have to process the humility in losing with their convictions of national pride. This synthesis can only bring them into the greater fold of humanity, which may be the point of the World Cup after all.

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Tokyo’s Metropolitan Expressway — Shuto Kōsoku Dōro — is Tokyo’s answer to handling large volumes of traffic traversing the megalopolis.

The first sections were opened in time to showcase Tokyo for the 1962 Olympics. Not designed as an unlimited speed road, its main purpose was to ferry cars around at moderate speeds, unhindered by the non-car friendly Tokyo streets.

While some sections snake alongside rivers, or behind buildings at ground level, most of the road sections are elevated above ground, or tunnel under major areas such as the Imperial Palace or other surface roads.

Many sections of road deck are multilevel, often consisting of four or more layers. Because of limitations of the landscape, buildings, subterranean infrastructure (other roads and train lines), the often convoluted elevated sections, tunnels, dividers, ramps, interchanges, and tollbooths all conspire to enhance the legend of the Shuto as being a challenging road to drive, at any speed.

The Shuto also includes the Tokyo Wan Aqualine, a 15km straight-line blast under, and then over, Tokyo Bay (wan) to Chiba. The Aqualine used to be a ‘private’ road, built by private interests and with a toll value set at the wish of the operator. Like many private roads in Japan (such as the Atsugi Toll Road to Fuji-san), they used to be un-policed for speed limits. This open status promoted street racing gangs, sometimes badging themselves with ’250′ or ’300′ patches – representing their supposed topped-out kilometer-per-hour speed achievements on public roads.

Sadly, or perhaps for the better, speed limits on private toll roads are now policed — not before I was able to enjoy nailing the throttle on a Ferrari V8, roof down, in a vain attempt to chase down some hairdresser in his RX-7. I am not sure what sounded better: the five-valve V8 from Modena, or the Hiroshima rotary cracking and spitting fire on the over-run as we screamed through the tunnel section. At some ridiculous speed, I chickened out, and watched the RX-7 disappear into the distance.

While street racers have used sections for racing, notably the Wangan (Bayshore) sections, the Shuto gained global exposure with the 1998 release of Shutoku Battle, a Dreamcast console game known as Tokyo Extreme Racer for export markets, accurate for its representation of the Shuto’s layout and surrounding features of Tokyo; down to being able to see my old apartment as you raced past at high speed. I still wake in the middle of the night when hearing a loud exhaust, thinking perhaps I am still in my bed next to the Akasaka-Roppongi-Knot (‘ARK’), a particularly notorious set of bends known to claim the unwary.

Working nearby to the Shuto too, and while enjoying car talk at work one day, one of the senior managers — perhaps sixty years of age — commented that he too enjoyed fast cars, driving a Legacy Turbo. As a joke I asked, “So Tanaka-san, do you get up at 02:00 and go racing around the Shuto?”

“Of course!” he blurted out rapidly, looking at me as if I was mad to even ask such a question.

One notable site for all car types to congregate is the Shuto’s Daikoku Futo – halfway between Yokohama and Tokyo on the Wangan route.

With no other facilities except a gas station and some fast food sellers, it is perhaps a natural place to congregate, talk about rides, and enjoy the sounds of fast cars screaming overhead on the elevated sections.

The Parking Area (‘PA’), on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays is often full of interesting rides. Not only for legendary Japanese cars like GT-Rs, twin-cammed Toyota and fast rotaries, but bikes too, the Porsche, Ferrari & Lamborghini clubs sometimes show up, as do a regular smattering of bozosoku and general shakotan style aficionados.

On the access roads outside the PA, in front of the local koban, less responsible drivers have been known to practice their mountain drifting skills. The massive tire marks, rubber-marbles in the gutter, and the sometimes dinged guard-rail, are all obvious signs of some serious drift work.

YouTube has numerous postings, including bemused police in their koban, and their attempts to shut the drifters down.

The new Yamate Tunnel adds another 10.9km of fun to the run from Ikebukero to Meguro. It features some remarkable engineering, including a twelve-level climb from the subterranean run to nine levels above ground to join the Chuo Expressway at Hatsudai – this up-and-down roller coaster ride alone is worth the ¥700 entrance fee.

While I ride the Shuto two or three times per week, commuting on my barge-like Maxam scooter, the best time of course is as recommended by Tanaka-san in his Subaru: late evenings, or early mornings. Chasing the fire-breathing RX-7s and GT-Rs is a lot more pleasurable when I can forget the camera, and enjoy the wail of an Audi V8, a Nissan inline six, or a high-revving Mazda rotary next to me as we scream through the tunnels and wind through the many routes around Tokyo.

All at the recommended speed limit of course.

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Skorj is a photographer/journalist living in Japan. For information on licensing these and other images please contact Magnesium Photos

In the film Messengers (Yasuo Baba, 1999) one of the protagonists says to our Lycra-clad heroine, ‘You look like a race queen.’ Parochially translated for American audiences as, ‘You look like a slut‘, this missive unintentionally sums up the role of race queens in the modern world.

A variation of the Formula 1 car racing European pit lane girls (who are supposedly present to hold umbrellas over drivers), race queens – or ‘campaign girls’ – are frowned upon in many Western countries as examples of sexism, and of cynical marketing for an otherwise male-dominated industry.

Contrary to the fall-off of sexist advertising campaigns for cars and the automotive industry globally, the race queen still survives in Japan. Major trade shows and industry events in Japan might have seen a reduction in their race queen populations recently, but this is more a sign of economic austerity over any update to sexual perspectives in Japan.

Buoyed by their high status in the modeling industry in Japan, super race queens continue to generate large fan-bases in their own right, commanding high appearance monies, and often driving their own careers accordingly.

The 2010 Formula 1 season opened in Melbourne recently, with a series of very mildly dressed pit lane girls (‘more modern’ was the statement). The same weekend held the annual Tokyo Motorcycle Show at Tokyo’s Big Sight in Odaiba. Present in a bewildering array of skimpy clothes the race queens continued to pout, pose and preen for the cameras as they do countless times a year across Japan.

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If any threat exists to race queens in Japan, it will not be from a waning popularity in their hardcore otaku fan base, nor will it likely come from ‘safety concerns’ associated with their skimpy clothing, and it will certainly not come from any change in perception of the role of women in Japan. Any further demise in race queen populations will surely be a result of purely economic motives.

As for our Lycra-clad heroine in ‘Messengers’, in Japan at least, she triumphs, beats her derisive competitor and wins the heart of the leading man, making a lot of money along the way…

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Only a few man-made structures lend themselves to automatic inclusion in science-fiction movies. Locations so out-of-this-world they have to be used as phantasmagoric shooting locations. San Diego’s Geisel Library, half the Statue of Liberty, the Bradbury Building…

On the Northern outskirts of Tokyo, the list also includes a drain. Also known by the fabricated name “G-Cans” (not an abbreviation of anything in particular), the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel however is no ordinary drain, but a series of enormous, interconnected, underground facilities. Massive holding tanks, surge suppressors, huge pump rooms, networked tunnels, control rooms, inlets, outlets, overflows, and more – all fifty meters underground.

With one hundred kilometers of flood control tunnels, the overall project was started in 1992, with the G-Cans section finishing in 2009. Designed to provide flood control for the northern reaches of the greater Tokyo metropolis, the G-Cans element alone is massive on an unimaginable scale.

Photography: Ken Lee / Magnesium. Nikon F100 35mm and XP2 Super.

The two billion dollar G-Cans project is nearly six and a half kilometers long, with an interconnecting series of holding silos, varying in size up to sixty-five meters tall and over thirty meters in diameter. The largest holding tank is the massive “cathedral” – one hundred seventy-seven meters long and seventy-seven meters wide. Its roof is supported by sixty massive pillars, designed to provide both strength and low resistance to the swirling waters.

The basic design function of G-Cans is to re-channel potential flood waters from one watercourse to another, balancing and regulating the water flow to ensure flood surges and river breaches are kept to a minimum. As well as natural water flows, a turbine hall, equipped with ten megaWatt of Pratt & Whitney pumping capacity, can move over two hundred thousand liters of water per second into the adjacent Edo River. That’s enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just over one second.

Photography: Skorj / Magnesium.

Construction of the main tunnels utilized a conventional Tunnel Boring Machine (“TBM”) and a two-layer lined tunnel – supporting framework and internal smooth sleeves for water flow. Ground water freezing was undertaken with large-scale expander insertions into the surrounding rock, with condensate forming on their many coupling heads, the now-removed expanders resembled alien spawning stations.

Standing meters below the previous high-water mark, with the sound of compressors and dripping water in the distance, is a remarkably surreal experience. The damp languid air adds to the feeling of potentially being swallowed up by a flooding wave as it careens through the tunnels, sweeping everything to its doom along the way. Fifty meters below the surface, fifty meters below the suburbs, with the kids playing soccer on the fields of Saitama above our heads, riding bicycles through the tunnels as we explored really added to the off-world feeling.

Since completion, the tunnels, side chambers, and main “cathedral” hall have been used in making a Tetsujin 28 film, a Range Rover commercial, numerous other TV spots, and some of the photographs here were used in the source rendering for a computer game.

While the main tunnels are now off-limits for access, the control room, above-ground infrastructure, and main cathedral are sometimes available for tours during the non-typhoon season. Bookings are available for Japanese speakers via their main website.

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Japanese women have one of the longest life expectancies in the world, yet there is a neighbourhood in Tokyo where many go to find promises and prayers on even more years. The secret to this Japanese fountain of youth is not some sacred spring or historical holy visitation however- the key to longevity in Japan is apparently to be found in something as simple as red underwear.

Sugamo, located in Tokyo’s northern metropolitan Toshima ward, is one of the areas of the capital commonly known as shitamachi, literally “downtown.” While in the west this might conjure up images of sparkling avenues of retail excess, theatrical name drops and glittering nights of cocktail hedonism, in Sugamo it simply means that the buildings and the outlook of the people have not really changed much since the 1950s. This is an area of post-war traditions and frugality where people rarely leave their immediate surroundings. Consequently, the area has evolved its own booming micro-culture that caters to the older generation in much the same way the fashionable areas of the city attract and enthrall the young. Indeed, Sugamo is often called the Harajuku of old ladies (Tokyo’s Harajuku district is famous for its cutting edge fashion and youth culture).

The heart of Sugamo lies in the the Togan-ji Temple where the statues of Toganuki Jizō and Arai Kannon promise cures and blessings on long life and health. All the attendant paraphernalia of religious observance abound: monks beg alms and offer prayers of longevity in return, health foods and lucky charms are sold, and in the temple grounds itself the statue of Arai Kannon is purported to offer those who rub it with a wet cloth a miracle cure in the corresponding area of the body. The worries of age are also a rich source of income for charlatan healers and medics who set up stalls in the temple grounds, and along the main shopping street known as Jizō Dori.

Perhaps the area’s most famous purchase is its iconic red underpants however. Red is a colour believed to offer those who wear it vigour and freedom from sickness, but this is just one of the many items available in the stores on Jizo Dori. Unlike other shopping streets in Tokyo, this is not a place where brand names count for much, unless of course you are a dedicated follower of the latest name in mobility scooters or want designer walking canes. The items for sale are generally cheap and familiar, the fashion is large-sized and low chic and everything is designed for the comfort and patronage of the older generation.

For Sugamo, however, business has never been better and while it will never be “fashionable” the growing number of older people in Japan is sure to keep the streets and temples of Sugamo popular for the foreseeable future. Far from the bright lights and neon of the Tokyo’s stereotypical image, these streets offer a unique insight into “old” Japan.

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Along with two other photographers, I am sitting in a rented car. As we sit parked on a sparsely lit dock in the south of Japan, we are watching the sun rise. Even before our arrival it feels like a unique journey; short-hop commuter flights, business hotels, a rented Honda rep-mobile, plotted routes on topographical maps, ramen dinners and konbini breakfasts.

It is 04:30, and after having driven through the early hours from Nagasaki to a remote fishing village in search of our boatman, we are ready to embark on the final leg to our ultimate destination – Hashima. An abandoned island-city, Hashima remains untouched in the nearly forty years since its 5000 or so occupants vacated by boat, taking with them only a few scant possessions.

With mining operations established in 1810, on an island less than 500 metres long, Hashima’s well known legacy includes it once being the most densely populated place on earth, housing what was Japan’s tallest building, and its first large-scale reinforced concrete apartment block. The erroneous claim of this island city being shelled by the US Navy in World War Two, ‘as it looked like a battleship’, contributes to the legend of Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island, evident in the popular local nickname for Hashima.

Coming across a few fishermen, who are enjoying their last cigarette before returning home, we are gruffly told our boatman is on the other side of the dock. Approaching him within earshot of his companions, he mumbles nothing more than our departure time, and walks off. At sea, our boatman’s demeanor changes immediately to a jovial, entertaining host arranged at the behest of our sponsors, telling us stories of the sea, and of his Hashima. Forty-five minutes later, he lands us on Hashima, and three of us scramble ashore with a day’s supplies, cameras, and more film than I have ever carried.

After giving us his promise to return before sunset, our boatman maneuvers off station, leaving us alone with the silence of Hashima, awed, and not really sure of what to do next.

Photography: Ken Lee / Magnesium. Nikon F3 20mm and XP2 Super.

The feeling of being in some far off post-apocalyptic land is immense. To experience a place where every way you turn is abandoned desolation, immediately overwhelms; you do not need to imagine what it would be like to stand in a once occupied city after a plague, The Bomb, or at the end of time.

Everything from the hospital, the school, factories, apartments, the bathhouse, the gymnasium, and the shrines stands vacant. Dark canyons of fallen lumber fill the streets, collapsed roofs abound, the detritus of a modern life is scattered under your feet as you walk – washed from the buildings by the wind, the rain, and the sea.

With little more to hear than a plaintive sea bird, and ominously the occasional clattering sound of falling masonry and concrete, we step over telephones, sake cups, toothbrushes, broken toys, milk bottles, and curiously, dental tools, all laying under foot as we scramble over what were once streets, and through the vacant buildings.

It is tempting to try and extract a man-against-nature message when coming to Hashima. The message here however is simply one of isolation, the feeling of vulnerability, and the opportunity to travel back in time to explore the lives of a coal mining island-city; to experience a snapshot of life in Japan from the 1960s and 1970s.

I cannot speak for my companions, but over the course of a day on Hashima as we document what we see, I go from being a photographer intent on making some serious commentary with my work, to gawking like an American tourist in Paris.

With the declining need for coal in the 1970s, Mitsubishi closed operations over a period of a few short months, ferrying the inhabitants back to the mainland with not much more than what they could carry. What they left behind in 1974, is the Hashima you see now.

Photography: Skorj / Magnesium. Polaroid Type-665.

With the passing of ownership and control from the Mitsubishi Mining Corporation to the local Prefecture Office, a 220 meter public walkway has now been opened on the south end of the island. Twice-daily tours, either as a stand-alone Hashima access ticket, or as part of a regional historic pass, are now available. Hashima, as we experienced it, will most likely disappear with the expected advent of the eager day tripper.

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For more on abandoned Japan, click here.

Izu is the teardrop peninsula jutting out into the Pacific ocean a little over one hundred kilometers from the mass of gray concrete that is the Tokyo megalopolis. Izu is morning mists, bambooed hilltops and wooden inns nestled in the moist salt air wet from the steam of a hundred hot springs poking through the lush volcanic soil. Izu is where Tokyo’s trains from the 60s go to rust and die, happy recipients of the second most rainfall in Japan. It’s a romantics romance and though proximally near, the makeup of Izu makes for an Alice-through-the-looking-glass kind of trip. For, after all, it is the metamorphosis one undergoes in getting there that is arguably the most important part of the trip. Photographer Jon Ellis is interested in capturing the process of “getting there”, rather than what might be done once arrived.

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Jon Ellis will be participating in the four-person exhibition Fragments of Tokyo from 2/8/10 – 2/14/10 at Place M in Shinjuku. If you are in Tokyo please visit the gallery (click the link below).

The feeling of entering these shops is not unlike that of entering a temple. You step into the dim light, surrounded by mysterious, arcane objects, only some of which you can properly identify.  As the incense-like sweet smell of grease and oil hits your nose, you begin to question the depth of your convictions. Are you worthy of entering, or will you be shuffled quickly and politely out again after your query is dismissed?

You’ll be greeted by an acolyte, who will set aside whatever task with which he was busying himself, clean his hands on the rag from his back pocket while discerns the nature of your visit before disturbing the monk-like masters of the shop, who likely won’t yet look up to acknowledge your presence, too busy breathing life into a shaft-driven bike from the 1930′s or machining a long-out-of-production part for an ancient Triumph or Indian. For them, there is too much to be done and too few people with the skills to do it. These are not people you disturb for petty interruptions.

Stepping back into the light of day, you carry the feeling of having set foot on hallowed ground, a sacred enclave of these remarkable machines of steel and rubber and grease and gasoline.

The shops are generally small and work areas cramped, but you feel a sense of the workers’ camaraderie as they work in close quarters.

There’s a jovial air about the shop at times. These men are doing what they love and loving what they do. Yet, there’s seriousness of purpose and a reverence for the bikes themselves, a limited and dwindling supply of vintage machines that are made to be subjected to the fierce demands of the road. These are the caretakers of this particular corner of history, the guardians of a tradition that is always at risk of disappearing.

Summer evenings are often spent not only repairing bikes, but admiring them.  They live and breathe bikes and sitting down with one, you get the sense they are sitting down with a friend.

This old Sunbeam carries a club badge for The Vintage Motor Cycle Club, a club formed in 1946 in Hog’s Back, Guildford, Surrey. The badge itself is old enough to be considered a vintage collectible, but at the time it was new, the bike was already a bit of a relic.

These photos are a small selection from a much larger body of work that is available for licensing. Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information.

Beyond the usual cliche, and outside of the normal expectation. These are the viewpoints a Magnesium photographer Skorj attempts to capture with his Polaroid camera. While Polaroid film is no longer being made, and many of these places have disappeared, their memories exist here, and in those who have seen an ordinary life…

An ancient mining town, a still-in-service 1950s’ train, an abandoned resort, a disused gas station, or a building whose occupants have long departed, they are all reduced with a common feeling of being lived in, well-used, and perhaps even loved.

If you are interested in using these in a commercial work, these photos are a small selection from a much larger body of work that is all available for licensing. Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information.

Magnesium Photographer Damon Coulter takes a fresh look at the Bushidō (武士道), the ancient samurai “Way of the Warrior” in an upcoming photo essay. Far from being a simple romantic notion in modern Japan, its influence can still be felt in the moral code of the Japanese people and their perceptions of honor, obedience, duty, and self-sacrifice.

If you are interested in using these in a commercial work, these photos are a small selection from a much larger body of work that is all available for licensing. Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information.

The last decade has seen the Tokyo Motor Show move from one of the most glamorous, over-the-top, motoring events on the annual calendar, to a more subdued, and very restrained event. For 2009, with the well publicized situation of having the European manufacturers staying away, and the then poor state of the global economy, the TMS was expected to feel a lot different.

Only a few major releases were scheduled (one being a rather ghastly, totally tasteless Lexus ‘sports car’) the show occupied only the main hall, instead of the usual multiple, and wide-spread halls. Even the campaign girls / race queen numbers were well down, causing great concern among the otaku looking for their usual T&A fix. Only a few manufacturers were able to keep it together under these constraints, but Suzuki clearly had a handle on a few good ideas. Along with their usual range, they also presented a 1979 Swift with an appropriately attire companion. Easily the stand-out display (at least on press day).

Nissan too, while covering a large floor space, were restrained. While the ever charismatic Carlos unveiled their Leaf Plug-In, the rest of their stand was suitably low-key. A curiously named SUV styling exercise did however catch a few people’s eye.

Honda (always a favorite of mine) too, had a restrained stand, with perhaps their most interesting device being an Insight based updated version of their popular 1980s CR-X.

On assignment for a UK scootering magazine, I was not impressed by any of the scooter or motorcycle stands, with perhaps Yamaha’s EC-1 being a single exception. The only other major events on the two-wheeled scene were from the hideously and overwrought stylists at the Korean and Taiwanese scooter manufacturers. Instead of ball-point pens, they should have been giving away Sic Sacs in their press kits.

While 2009 was a quiet event, leaving the show I kept thinking about that little Suzuki…

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