THROUGH LUXEMBOURG INTO GERMANY

Luxembourg was a welcome sight after spending time in the French police station. Here's a shot across the famous valley. The sights are really breathtaking here. The Wenzel Walk is a 100-minute stroll through the city that takes you through 1000 years of history. It's a must. 

After the fiasco with the French police, I was happy to finally cross the border into Luxembourg. This was my first time staying in Luxembourg, which is a small country situated between France and Germany. In any case, this place was nice, with a lot of nice shops, restaurants and history. It seems like the place is filled with either college-age people or rich aristocratic types. I think you need money to live here. I stopped by a local shopping mall to buy some traveling necessities, and then spent a night in a Hotel Ibis right outside of town. Next, I'm off to Heidelberg, home of a very famous castle before going to the Hockenheimring to test drive some new cars. The Audi Q7 is running great! We'll see how fast it can go on the Autobahn soon.

That evening, I had dinner in a very posh seafood restaurant./ I forgot to mention that the night before, I dined in a cool theme restaurant in le Mans. And yes, the theme was racing. The food was not so good, but the atmosphere was great! 

I stopped by the main shopping mall in Luxembourg. What was great was there was a Walmart-like store inside that sold everything you could think of. I bought some traveling necessities here. Walmart is much cheaper. 

Mine's GT-R Back from Universal

Our Mine's GT-R is finally back from Universal for the Fast and Furiuos movie shoot after 3 months. I'm looking forward to see how much it will be featured in the movie.  It'll probably be one scene for half a second.  You know how those things are.  Although it will probably get more exposure than our  350Z project car.  They only had the Z for like 3 days only for the big street race scene.   They used the Z as a background car.  The GT-R was most likely used in other scenes too.  Anyway I'm glad the GT-R came back in one piece without any scratches and some wierd riced out stickers.  Our GTChannel sticker was intact too.  :)  

A Lunch with Foxy!

I had a lunch with Rhys and Tanner, and Tanner's mom!

She was visiting Tanner by chance.  She is very very nice unlike her son! JK JK!  

BTW, There was a announcement that he is gonna be hosting a U.S version of famous U.K TV show called Top Gear. Congrats Tanner! 

I'm very glad that he is getting famous even in such a main stream world and I hope it will open up drifting to the world!

Give Us Your FEED BACK please!

We are planning our GTChannel Version 2 and want to hear your comments!  We are sending out free swag to members who contribute their feedback.  Like this hat that Daijiro is holding. 

What new features you would like us to add?

What features you do not like on the current GTChannel?

What do we need to improve on?

Which current feature you like the most?

Let us know anything you feel or notice about the site. 

Feel free to post as a "Comment" to this thread or email us at info@gtchannel.com. 

Any feedback would be helpful!

GTChannel Admin

Spoon NSX -R GT

This is rare shot of the Spoon NSX R-GT and Mine's R35 GT-R side by at Fuji Speedway.  The blond Japanese dude screaming infront of Ichishima and Niikura is none other than Tarzan Yamada.  We already brought in one of Mine's R35 into the US a few months ago.  It's still in the hands of Universal Studios to be featured in the Fast and Furious 4 movie.  I don't know what exactly they did with the car but it's supposed to be in there...somewhere.  We'll never know until the movie comes out.  

Localizing Videos

In mid July we will make an announcement but we are working very hard right now to localize a bunch of Best Motoring titles.  Producing a video segment from scratch is pretty intense but localizing something from Japanese to another language is almost just as labor intensive.  Obviously the editing of on screen text and subtitles are not easy.  I really shouldn't be even writing this blog because I have to proof read a million lines but I needed to take a break for a second.  

The Best Motoring Japanese versions are not scripted (except for the narration) so there is no writtne script we can get in a Word Document and just give it to someone to translate.  ALL of the comments from the cast and each of the on screen text needs to be picked up first.  You don't need to be a translator to do this.  You just need a good ear and know how to record to Word what you hear.  

The second step is the translation part.  There are two things that you need to know to do this.  1. Knowledge in technical automotive terms and 2. Creative mind and writing skills.  Knowledge in auto terms is pretty self explanatory.  If you are translating something as technical as Best Motoring you need to know the stuff.   An example of creative writing is when Tsuchiya Keiichi says in Japanese how the engine revs ups like "paaan, paaan".  In Japanese these sound imitation type words are called GIONs.  I looked up gion in Google translate and "Onomatopoeic" popped up...  We use a lot of these in Japan.  Kira kira is something shiny, tsuru tsuru is something slipery, sube sube is something smooth and so forth.  Another hurdle for someone trying to learn the language.  So you need to come up with a creative way in English to communicate that engine feeling to the viewers.  

After everything is translated, the subtitles need to be matched up to the video as when they appear for how many second/frames.  Another challenge because some sentences need to be longer or shorter when translated.  But they need to appear on screen long enough to read.   To shorten a comment without loosing the essense.  This matching process we do in the editing stage after the video has been cut and the time frames are fixed.  At the same time if you have a incar shot like the above where you have a footcam, a tachometer cam and text displaying the driver's name and car, you have no space to display 50 words!  Editorial skills needed again here.  We also make sure to proof read everything 4 times and make sure everything is consistent.  If we displayed the text "tread" to show the specs of one car we can't call it "track" when it appears again for another car.  That kind of stuff.  I don't even want to get into the conversion of km to mile and kg to lbs.  

So it's pretty labor intense stuff, there is no translation software that you feed and presto everything comes out perfect and ready to go.  Anyway I better get back to work...

Can I Spam

I am making my first post

TROUBLE NEAR THE FRENCH BORDER

I was temporarily detained at this Gendarmerie (Police) station. Ran into a terrible ordeal with the French authorities.

My wonderful drive from Le Mans to Paris to Germany hit a snag near the French border by Luxembourg. I got into a fickle situation with the law. It was a bad deal. It's kind of a long story, so if you want the details, go to Sam's Blog. And don't ever expect the Frenchies to cut you a break. Man, I wish they weren't so uptight.

Good Soba This Time

Since I introduced the good udon place the other day, I thought I'd introduce a good soba joint near our office too.  It's called Ichimian.  The photo here is the shop in Old Torrance.  They have another shop closer to our office on PCH too.  We usually go to the one on PCH but today we were near this one so we had lunch here.  The menu is a little bit different between the two.  The one in Old Torrance is more like a soba joint in Japan where you order at the counter and just slurp everything down standing up.  These type of places are called Tachigui soba.  Literally means "eat standing soba".  

The one on PCH is more like a restaurant.  It's open at night too and they even have sushi.  Both of them have really good soba.  My friend Ichishima-san from Spoon said that the soba here is just as good as the soba in Japan.  I'm personally more of a udon guy than a soba person but this soba, we eat at least once a week.  Check it out if you are in the area.  Definitely worth the try.   

Gotta dig the J style display and the little counter where they pass the soba.   

OMG WTF

My friend sent me this picture!

Awesome! I need to get one for my car here in California!