ICE Age

Sean: That word you called me, ‘gaijin’ … What does that mean exactly?
DK: It means turn around; keep walking.
    – The most quotable and laughter-inducing line from “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”

My dad is a car guy.  My husband is a car guy.  His dad is a car guy. 
I’m no Marisa Tomei in “My Cousin Vinny,” [2] but I’m at least conversant in cars… or at least when it comes to the three that I’ve owned – all Japanese, all manual transmission: ‘94 Nissan Pulsar (“Jocelyn”), ‘09 Toyota Camry (“Beatrix”), ‘96 Mazda Miata (“Ruby”).  Japan is actually where I bought my first car and where I learned to drive stick, so, needless to say, cars with both of those qualities have a very special place in my heart.

Adrift in Tokyo

The three times Christian has been to Japan now, he’s availed himself of Japanese car culture to the greatest extent possible: shopping at famous automotive stores, renting super cars, and visiting auto manufacturers, among other things.  I have accompanied him for most of those activities, though he was very much on his own while I was jet-setting with the Climate Lab this last time. [3]  I abandoned him in Tokyo, but he absolutely survived on his own with trips to Up Garage, [4] Fun2Drive, [5] and (in Fukushima, while I was soaking in an onsen) the Ebisu Circuit. [6]

To be completely honest, when I lived in Japan, the extent of my Japanese car culture knowledge was pretty much limited to the one “Fast and the Furious” movie I’ve actually seen. [7] I went into an automotive store (Super Autobacs [8]) exactly once so I could make exactly one modification to my Nissan: getting an FM radio transmitter to plug into my Discman so I could still play music, despite the broken tape deck.  (If you were born after the 1980s, I’m sorry that the previous sentence was likely incomprehensible.)

But it has been an absolute pleasure watching my husband positively glow when experiencing aspects of Japan I never even knew existed: encountering cars he never thought he’d see in person (let alone drive), visiting showrooms and manufacturing facilities, and connecting with other car guys (and girls) from the other side of the world.  And it was during this most recent trip to Japan that we got to experience one of the rarest bucket list items (at least for foreigners) when it comes to the Japanese car scene: the Daikoku Parking Area.

The Floating World

The Daikoku Parking Area is a highway rest stop in Tokyo Bay on a patch of reclaimed land.  A long ramp of concrete spirals down to sea level, letting motorists access a simple parking lot, adjacent to a restaurant and a convenience store.  It would be otherwise unremarkable if not for the 30-plus year tradition of motor-heads arriving at any time of the day or any day of the week to show off their vehicles. There is no official page or Facebook group – the event happens because people know it happens.  And because it is unsanctioned, it is regularly shut down by the police after a certain point in the evening. [9] And because it was originally a meeting place for street racers in illegally modified cars, [10] it is considered to be the inspiration for “Tokyo Drift.”  

Since we were going to be in Yokohama anyway, this event was a must-see for Christian, but I have since learned that seeing it for yourself is as controversial as it is difficult.  There is no pedestrian access to the island, which poses less of a problem for getting there than it does for getting back, and it seems that increased tourist activity is leading to more crack-downs by the cops, especially when tourists get rowdy… or get stuck there.  It was our last night in the country, and after a visit to the Cup Noodles Museum [11] and a beverage at a local craft brewery, we hailed a cab to Daikoku.  On the way there, our driver – who obviously knew what we were doing, based on our destination – enthusiastically told us about how much fun it would be to see all the cars there.  I asked him if we would have any trouble getting off the island, and he told us no, not at all.

Maybe he was just being agreeable, not wanting to disappoint his riders, but that is absolutely not the case.  Many of Christian’s car friends have specifically avoided Daikoku (despite a strong desire to go) because it is notoriously difficult to access if you don’t have a car of your own: once the police shut it down (which they did around 9pm), no cars can access the island (that includes taxis coming to pick up tourists) until the wee hours of the morning. [12]  We, luckily, managed to hitch a ride with two guys from California who had rented a Subaru Impreza specifically to come to the meet.  If not for them, we would have been sitting outside the Lawson eating onigiri until about 5am – and hitching a ride, though extremely safe in Japan, isn’t easy, since there are few cars at the meet with more than two seats.

I was legitimately shocked that my husband, who loves certainty, was willing to leave the events of the evening to chance, but such is his love of cars – and the meet itself was a lot of fun, even for me.  I walked around and played with nighttime settings on my Nikon DSLR while Christian chatted with various car owners about what they drove (only relying on me for translation services once or twice).  We found people who brought the same cars we had at home and people who brought cars you typically wouldn’t see outside Japan.

Evolution or Extinction?

But this experience (and all of our Japanese car experiences, really) got me thinking about the culture of car shows, meets, cruises, races, and so on, where people show off their (often) highly customized cars… and what that culture will look like in the years to come as internal combustion engine vehicles go the way of the dodo.  We’re nowhere near losing ICE cars from the road yet, but many major cities around the world already have limits on tailpipe emissions, and several countries are looking to put an end to sales of gas-powered cars in the next 10-25 years. [13] Like it or not, the car market is heading that way, and manufacturers are already preparing for it.

I’ve seen Teslas show up to car meets and track events, but they’re definitely the exception and not the rule – at least for now.  With future ramp-downs of ICE vehicle sales and manufacturing already planned, we will eventually see fewer gas-powered cars on the road as they meet their ends, one way or another.  They themselves will become rarities, possibly (eventually) things for museums and wealthy collectors or for driving tours through the countryside around Mt. Fuji.  But as that shift happens, I wondered whether electric vehicles and hybrids would slowly take the place of ICE cars at the types of car events that are common today, or if the events themselves would fundamentally change over time. I clearly needed to ask someone with his finger on the pulse of all things automotive – fortunately, I knew where to find one.

Christian does have Marisa Tomei-level automotive knowledge, and when he’s not working on his cars, he’s showing them off to others.  According to him, there is a specific kind of enthusiasm around ICE cars because they feel a certain way when you drive them, you can modify them to do what you want them to do, and there’s a level of connection and customization that is harder to achieve with electric vehicles.  EVs are largely appliances to most people who have them: sure, some models have performance features built in, and some companies offer modifications, but the vast majority of EV owners want the car to get them from Point A to Point B.  I personally have met some very enthusiastic EV or hybrid owners, but that enthusiasm is often related to fuel economy or offset of environmental impact.

That’s not to say that EVs can’t be fun: I’ve been in a Tesla Model 3 Performance, and boy was that exciting when my friend hit the accelerator.  But if EVs ultimately never inspire the same level of “love it / modify it / show it off” fervor that their conventional counterparts do, it will be interesting to see how events like the Daikoku Meet in Japan or Cars and Coffee in the US weather an eventual decrease of the vehicles that make them so enjoyable.  That certainly won’t happen any time soon, but it might in my lifetime.  Being a snobby manual transmission driver myself, it feels weird to think that someday I might own a car that doesn’t even have a multi-speed transmission.  We will certainly reap environmental benefits in that transition away from gas-powered cars – and health benefits to go along with it – but I also hope there’s some level of enjoyment to be gained for all the car guys in my life.

How about you? Are you a car person, and, if so, are there things worth getting excited about when it comes to hybrids and EVs, or will you (like me) drive your ICE car into the ground? Please share your thoughts in the comments – and thanks for reading!

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[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439630/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nGQLQF1b6I

[3] https://radicalmoderate.online/climate-lab-japan-in-the-classroom/

[4] https://www.jalopnik.com/up-garage-is-the-auto-parts-store-of-your-dreams-1832581425/

[5] https://fun2drive-japan.com/

[6] https://fukushima.travel/destination/ebisu-circuit/56

[7] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463985/

[8] https://www.jalopnik.com/a-look-inside-autobacs-japans-fascinating-auto-parts-m-1832610011/

[9] https://www.speedhunters.com/2020/03/cars-katsu-daikoku-still-worlds-best-car-meet/

[10] https://en.japantravel.com/kanagawa/daikoku-car-meet/69764

[11] https://radicalmoderate.online/the-maruchan-candidate/

[12] https://www.reddit.com/r/RideitJapan/comments/18r05jd/is_daikoku_pa_still_subject_to_latenight_closures/

[13] https://www.greencitytimes.com/global-ice-vehicle-phase-out/