Redondo Beach, LA

The view from my hotel room.

Detroit (that I thought was a rock city)

Dawn of Canada from American side.

Mazda Road To Indy

As I just recently installed a rollbar on my miata and am considering to attend one of track events at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, I decided to first visit the raceway and see other people racing there. 

Mansouan: The Secret Awamori Cellar and Playground to Learn Handcrafts

Hidden in the forest in Tenniya district, Nago, there is a shop named Mansouan (蔓草庵). Seibin-san, who is a former-director of the museum of Nago-city, built the shop literally by himself. Inside the shop is a HUGE collection of bottles of awamori, the Okinawan traditional rice liquor.

Sequoia Sake and Box Shop

Some friends of mine are friends with the owner of Sequoia Sake Brewery and invited me to attend their brewery tour and sake tasting event. 

Mazda Miata and Monterey

Lover's Point. Looks tropical in photo but was freezing in real. But it was a beautiful place!

I happened to buy a 1997 Mazda Miata I found on Craigslist for $3500. It's a old car and a bit shaky and noisy but has no major problems and drives great! I plan to install a hard dog roll bar on it so that I can do more crazy things with this guy, e.g. drive on a raceway. My dad in Japan is so jealous.

SF City

Which photo do you like the more?

Death Valley Road Trip

Because she said she wants to go to Death Valley for a starry nights' photoshoot, like, next weekend.

Oyama, Tateyama (2009)

So it's throwback Thursday! I don't remember what exactly brought me there, but at the sophomore year of college I made a decision to take a summer job at a shrine (雄山神社 at 立山, 富山) that let me live on a top of a scarily beautiful Mt. Tateyama for good one month, and experienced unforgettable moments for life.  I found the photos of my stay on my facebook album that I posted on 2009. My photography skill back then wasn't so great, and actually many of the photos were not even taken by myself, but thanks to factbook's 'download album' feature I decided to re-post them on my blog so that I (and others!) will see them more often. 

My Auto Challenge

To be honest, I had truly never been interested in any automobile things in my life until it suddenly became my job. I literally never paid attention on any of the car brands (For example, somehow I believed Toyota's emblem represent Hitachi, and Hitachi doesn't even make cars! :P), and had no idea about how much cars could cost or anything. I happened to start working at a research devision of one of those automakers a year and half ago, but when I got the offer at the first place I didn’t even have a US driving license nor my own car. Ever since, I try to put all my effort to learn about cars and get myself excited about it, and the challenge still continues...

A Visit to Santa Cruz

Three years in Bay Area and first time visiting Santa Cruz. It was a lot more prettier that I'd expected. There are still some other places that I missed this time in Santa Cruz so I will definitely revisit there hopefully soon. 

Sakagura: Visiting a Local Sake Brewery

A several minutes walk away from Koga (古河) station, Ibaraki-prefecture, there is a local sake brewery called Aoki-shuzo (青木酒造). This sake brewery, called “Saka-gura (酒蔵)” in Japanese, has a long history starting from 1831, and is still providing the finest awarded-winning sake to the local community and across Japan.