from lax

Sitting in lax waiting for my delayed plane to depart. Actually this is my first ever post from my black berry. I have no idea how I am going to up load a photo of my sad looking gate...
Going to Vegas tonight not to party but to study. Out of all things to do in Vegas...
Google is throwing this seminar for Adwords. I thought I'd might as well learn more about this black art of optimizing our Adwords advertisement.
Lets see how it goes...

E! van

Went to the E! building today for a meeting.

I was asked "are you auditioning for the guys cooking show?" as I was waiting in the lobby. I should've gone since I would've loved to show them my mean natto (fermented Japanese soy beans) and rice bowl. They probably would have called security as soon as I opened the package of natto. Natto smells like...garbage basically. But it's good food.

Primedia Enthusiast Titles Sold for $1.2 Billion

Buyer Source Interlink to Form Full-Service Media Company

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Source Interlink Cos., the home- entertainment distributor, this afternoon said it agreed to buy Primedia's enthusiast-media division,
Primedia's enthusiast division, just sold to Source Interlink Cos., includes 70 magazines, 90 websites and 60 event programs.
which includes magazines such as Hot Rod and Motor Trend, for $1.2 billion.

Full article on Advertising Age

So giant mag publisher gets sold off for $1.2B. Same day Chrysler is sold to Cerbus Capital Management for $7.45B. Either Primedia got a killer deal or the automaker got low balled big time. But then again Google bought Youtube for $1.6B which everyone thought was the same thing as flushing your money down the toilet.
Especially when Viacom charges a $1B lawsuit against Youtube the second after it's bought by Google.

Drifting vidoes on American Touge 3: Drift Bible Project D

If you know that drifting videos are good for you, then head over to and check out Drift Bible Project D Online. The first drift video is up and ready for your peeing eyes. We'll have more updating for anyone who wants to catch the drift.

This is our first attempt to truly cross over internet video content with DVD. Part 1 is on GT Channel and the Part 2 is on the DVD. Each segment is independently entertaining and is a segment on its own. We can't fit everything in the DVD so this is another chance for our viewers to enjoy our videos free online! Enjoy.

American Touge 3 DVD release (2)

Our latest release DVDs arrived to the office just a while ago. Besides the AT segment which has now become an annual event at Willowsprings, we also have something interesting called the Drift Bible Project D in this DVD. In this segment Daisuke Ito challenges the art of drifting. The segment is divided in two parts. You can see Part 1 on gtchannel.com and Part 2 on the DVD.
We hope everyone enjoys this DVD. We did.
Go to http://www.bestmotoringvideo.com for more info.

Formula D Long Beach Video

Formula D Long Beach

We have a new Formula D Long Beach feature page up on GT Channel. There will be 5 video clips on the feature page. I shot all of the videos on this page. I'm usually not the one to shoot video for our production but it was a good experience. Especially when you have a good editing guy like our Katsu Takahashi anything can look pretty damn good. Enjoy!

Lexus Scoop Road Rage?

What we thought would be a quick run to Mitsuwa food store in Torrance for some udon noodles became a near accident when our GT Channel Autonews Blog editor found some mysterious looking cars in front of him...



GT Channel Autonews Blog

Picked up by Autoblog:
Autoblog

Picked up by Jalopnik:
Jalopnik

FD Long Beach Video by Belle One

Here is a nice clip we found on GTC. Thanks to Belle One!

BMI Caster Daisuke Ito wins Super GT Okayama!

American Touge 3 DVD release

AT3 DVD goes on sale on April 30th, 2007.
Go to http://www.bestmotoringvideo.com

GT Channel Mirror

Only natural to have the GT Channel logo on the side mirrors.
GT Channel is all about blowing by cars and leaving them behind in your mirrors.

Thanks to Garpot Studios for a great pic.

Edmunds.com

We visited edmunds.com for a meeting.


Edmunds.com lounge. They have 40 feet long coffee counter!


Did you know that Edmunds was founded in 1966?!


Open air office. Kind of reminded my old days when I used to work in Ohtemachi as a "salary man". I liked all of the colors in the office. Very startup like with lots of space.


Cadillac bench. Lots of fun things in the office.

USC Trojans Football

Most of you that know me personally are aware that I love cars but football is my passion. I played high school ball in Houston Texas where I grew up and college ball at Waseda University in Tokyo. This past weekend a few players and two coaches from Waseda came to visit USC here in LA. I helped them with logistics like booking hotels etc., and went to USC with them during the weekend.



Practice field



USC spring scrimmage


Trojan Horse


Waseda Players with coach Sam Anno


With head coach Pete Carroll

Japanese football still has a long way to go so coming to somewhere like USC to learn and absorb as much as possible was a great experience for Waseda. Waseda had been to USC 2 years ago too. Last year Waseda invited a coach to Tokyo for about a week. I hope this relationship continues as there is always so much to learn.
When I was still playing for Waseda we had the privilege of going to Yale for a whole week and practicing with the Yale coaches. Later in the week we played Keio Univ at Harvard stadium. That week Keio had practiced with the Harvard coaches for one week. Scheduling and economic constraints prevented the entire team to visit but I am confident those that came will take back everything they learned here.

GT Channel/Best Motoring videos now available on BitTorrent

Best Motoring Intl. videos are now available for downloading via BitTorrent. Yes legally.
You can buy a 90 min DVD for $9.99 or rent it for $2.99.

American Touge 3 DVD Trailer

Formula D Long Beach 2007

Went to FD Long Beach on Saturday. Usually I'm not the videographer at events but this time I thought I'd give it a shot. GT Channel needs to be light and nimble for small productions and event coverage like this. For Best Motoring we can have huge productions.
Here's our Best Motoring flags at the Live Sockets booth. DVDs and t-shirts are always a popular item at events.
2nd photo is Dai-chan being interviewed by Courtney. Dai got 3rd place overall.

For more info on FD Long Beach go to GT Channel Auto News blog.
We'll have a special feature page with videos soon.

Gymkhana USA

We went to Gymkhana USA this weekend. Half pleasure and half work. I had a camera with me just in case something interesting happened. We brought out the 2008 Mitsubishi and we found Dai Yoshihara at the event with his Rockstar/Nitto drifting team, I had him climb into the Lancer and take it for a few laps. We will get that video footage up soon on GT Channel.

Gymkhana USA This Weekend

See you there!

GT Channel Auto News

Our GTChannel Auto News has a new editor, Tyrone Rodriguez. He's churning out post after post. Check it out as it's 100 times better than when I was attempting to edit auto news.