LAND OF THE RISING SUN

Note: I wrote a great long post in Japan, and through operator error and no Internet in the hotel, never posted the damn thing. Here it is, backdated through the miracle of technology.

Ohio Gozaimas (Japanese for good morning)

Well, I've arrived in Japan. I've been here before, but never outside of the airport. Twin Ring Motegi is a really beautiful track. It's located in the countryside of Japan in the Tochigi Prefecture (A province or state for the North Americans in the audience). Honda basically decided lop off the top of a mountain and build a racetrack. If not for all the Japanese signage everywhere, you'd swear you were in mountains of Tennessee or North Carolina.

So far, the trip has been a great experience. The people I work with from the track are very nice and our translators have been very helpful with the staffers who prefer to speak Japanese to English (Though their English is better than my limited Japanese vocabulary._ Lots of Japanese food so far, but there are some Western influences in the town where we are staying -- Starbucks and McDonalds -- which for the most part I am trying to avoid.

I've posted some photos from the trip here. They're from the Honda Collection at TRM. All the photos with me are on someone else's camera.

More later,

Arni