Going to HK:)

[Mux213]

YEAH!

I saw my first Hachi Roku here in Hong Kong last night. Unfortunately it was while being a passanger in the car driving me to my bro's in law wedding so I didn't have a chance to take a closer look. What made it especially troublesome was that it was parked infront of a shop around the corner of where I am staying here in Sun Shine City/Ma On Shan.

Anyways, t'was a black Trueno hatchback and looked in pretty nice shape in the glance I was able to give it. I'll be keeping my eyes open alot more around here, if he parks here again I'll be sure to shoot a few photo's and leave a note for the owner. If you are on here mate, please let me know cause I'd love to see your car up close!

Owh and Kenny, could you give some more details about where your mate is in HK island? I might be able to drop by next week if we deside macau is a little over budget (which right now it seems to becoming)

[Mux213]

Hehe, this is starting to become a little trip report me thinks Sorry no photo's yet (allthough I hardly fotographed cars..)

Anyways, before heading out to macau we spend a day shopping around somewhere on the other side of HK. In some little store where they had lots of little manga toy's I found some tiny initial D toy cars, I believe they have been on sale on this site before.. Since they only cost 4 euro's I took a nice trueno along

So yesterday we headed out to Macau, after checking into the hotel we tried to find where we could go shopping, first when the wrong way and ended up in some district that was way booooring, allthough there were some car shops around but not much to see. Then head the other way and found out the shops around the casino are relatively expensive and booring, just camera and phone shops, designer clothes shops, etc.

Also what really struck us is that macau currently is a bit of a mess, they are building new stuff everywhere, they are totally modernising it but it does get in the way of thigns.

Walking even further we finaly got to what I guess was the center of macau with all the normal shops and sightseeing things and so. Getting lost in the little streets of macau we suddenly hit this small store that sold loads of little toy things, suddenly my eyes caught a trueno Initial D toy!! Yeah nice I thought, bit bigger, something like 1/32 or so scale, remote controlled (simple forward/reverse/left/right). Coolest, only 5 euro's so I bought it. Later inspecting it in the hotel I found out it was some cheap ass chinese ripoff, I bought myself an ad86 turano car driven by kazumi from the speed suns, well you get the idea, just twisting the words enough not to get into trouble with brand licensing Still its cute as hell and for the 5 bucks a fun buy.

Walking further down that street we ran into an rather wicked department store. First of all, instead of going up, it went down, 4 stories underground Second, it was all japanese. Not much manga stuff but they sold anything japanese, from japanese food, to toys, to tupperware, to car accessories, to whatnot. Offcourse the most fun I had was when I ran into a rack full of canned coffee! The stuff really does exist!!
Owh and almost everything in that store costs just 1 euro, which we didn't find out until we finaly got to the cashier. I really have to go there some day again

Last but not least totally exhausted on our way to the hotel we got into this department store that looked like it was ready to collapse. Escalators didn't work, looked really shitty but for some reason we went in, Lily saw some cute clothes there.. On the top floor I found heaven... well for me anyways, a little store tucked a way fully STACKED with old model kit boxes (and I mean stacked litterly, they didn't have shelves just hundreds of boxes stackd ontop of eachother). They just about had the whole gundam and macross series model kits. Again a place I someday need to return to, I was way to tired and only ended up buying a nice tiny valkarie model.

Today we went to check out Taipa and Coloane or whatever its spelled like. They are the two city's or districts or whatever on the island part of macau (macau itself is a penincula of china). This was mostly tourist sightseeing, little shops of interest to manga or car freaks alike. We ended up in the 'mountains' of coloane. There are some great roads out there! Only problem is, allthough people driving in macau have a total lack of understanding of traffic laws (there doesn't seem to be anything like right of way) they do all drive VERY VERY VERY VERY slowly in their high performance cars. Crazy people!
Also we visited on the wrong day, we found this cool dammed off reserviour where you could rent little pedal boats, play with remote controlled boats, etc, but it was all closed today

All in all, Macau is fun to visit for a day or two as a tourist. Its real appeal is in all the casino's but I am no gambling man. I hope to return there some day when they've somewhat finished building it a little more and when the temparature is alot lower

[oldskull]

nice find Mux. Buy me 1 ae86 model if you find them again I will pay u back. I would like to have Levin red of course if you can find them

[Ivan141]

Well Mux, definately give us a shout if your going back to the model shop sometime...
I get the feeling that you wont be going back to macau this vacation so
@oldskull: You can buy ae86 levin models from http://www.HLJ.com (hobby link japan), they have fair prices and ship fast. There are many good diecast models out there these days (mostly trueno's though), trust me you want one of those if you're not experienced with building these models (I have two kits...1 finished).

[banpei]

Hehe. I'd must say that Initial D also had some trouble with the licensing issues by Toyota. They couldn't get Toyota's approval in time so the Trueno was called Tureno. You can still see the disasters from that: a lot of people still call the car Tureno eventhough the newer (official) releases of Initial D contain edited scenes where Tureno is substituted with Trueno. But then again: most people still buy the cheap DVD boxes from HK and Malaysia. >

But a bunch of Trueno toy cars would be great and would certainly fit in your suitcase.
So if you go back to the store (in HK, not Macau) buy one for me!
Too bad Initial D doesn't feature a trueno silver coupe.

Anyway: you can buy the canned coffee in the Okura hotel, right here in Amsterdam.

[Ivan141]

Hey banpei,
I ran into a 1:31 diecast initial D trueno @ a model shop a few weeks ago...the same thing is also for sale on HLJ. Looked pretty good except for the wheels (which didnt look like anything I know really). For a trueno coupe I'm afraid you're either limited to plastic model kits (which are a bitch to build, and details on some models are a bit off), or maybe some very rare and overly expensive diecast model in 1:64 (if it even exists...I know levins do).

To get back on topic: Mux, when can we expect you back in holland?

[banpei]

Hmmm, a 1/31 diecast would be a bit too big, I'd rather go for a 1/64 or 1/43

I believe Mux was going to stay there one month in total, so I'd say another two weeks.

[Ivan141]

1:31 is about the smallest size I would consider...I dont have to play with it..but it's tiny enough already @ about 20-30 cm's lenght.. 1:64 is matchbox size..

[banpei]

I'm not going to play with it, I'm going to use it as a keyring.

[Mux213]

Banpei,

I'll keep my eyes open, I ran into keychain initial D thingies before so you may not even have to go through the trouble of changing it.

I dont know when though, today I'm going to central and then to causeway bay, tomorow morning its 5 days to China and then I have only 2 days left here in HK and most of that will be spend with my bro in law.

Also my wife is giving me a harder and harder time because I bought way to many things already, Gundam seed box, some Macross model kit, Megazone series, remote control trueno, small matchbox trueno, etc.

Most of the model shops here actually have the whole initial D series plastic model kits where you have to paint and glue them together yourselves. Maybe a nice side product for Mfactory? There are like 10 or 15 model shops in the street right next to his office!