TOKYODV Video Log

Tall, lanky models walk around futuristic Nissan cars at the Tokyo Motor Show.. Oh, yeah. The car! I think it’s a prototype Nissan Ideo, from 2003.
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My first real clip of effectively mixing sound-loops with video. The Mercedes Benz F400 Carving surprised me when I first saw it; The real-life Batmobile!

Three weeks after I posted this clip, I received an email from Germany. It was from one of the engineers who helped design the front-end steering mechanism for the F400. He liked the video and wanted to know more about what I saw at the Motor Show that day; the crowds, the impressions, the atmosphere at the Mercedes area.

We exchanged a few emails, and I got the first taste of what video could bring to the Internet experience. This was in 2001 and broadband hadn’t matured yet. At the time, everyone was streaming content. I hated streaming video; Downloading small packages of quality video was a much better experience, in my opinion.. and I knew what the viewers were seeing.

You can find more on the F400 Carving at Edmunds.com: “Incorporating drive-by-wire technology, this ‘Benz controls steering and braking through computer-monitored impulses rather than conventional racks and cables. This allows for quicker responses from the car; after all, these computers are smarter than you. They override human inputs that it deems as incorrect (Hal? Hal?)..”
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The Digiko Dunlop Girls perform, what I believe to be a popular Puffy song at the time; Cant remember the title.

There were many girls performing at the Tokyo Motor Show that day, but I was most impressed with this group. They captured the pure, innocent silliness often associated with radial tires. :D.
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Related – WATCH the most recent Digiko Girls performance here..

Skin, skirts, boots. Gawkers, hawkers, iPods, and telephoto lenses.. Gull-wing doors, independently-wheeled steering, and non-stick gas pedals (maybe)..

“The latest in Toyota’s family of ‘Fine’ fuel cell show cars, the Fine-X is a small, four-seat minivan concept with massive gullwing doors. It features a compact fuel-cell hybrid powertrain, which drives electric motors in each of the four wheels.

Besides the exotic propulsion system, the Fine-X is also unusual in that each wheel can steer independently, through as much as 90 degrees, for extraordinary maneuverability.

But the Fine-X’s biggest party trick is that it can rotate on its own axis a full 360 degrees…” from here.
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Fuel-cell, yoke controller, swivel chairs, high boots, short shorts.. Toyota-roulette accelerator not included.. (hopefully)

“… The Fine-N’s overall package consist of a low-flat floor with the length of a Corolla, but with a cabin even more spacious than the luxurious sedan Lexus LS430. The vehicle employs four in-wheel motors in an innovative “cabin on wheels” configuration. Key to the fresh proportions of this ground-hugging, long-wheelbase-to-length design is Toyota’s fuel cell hybrid technology, which allows freedom from conventional power train layout constraints so that individually electric-powered wheels can be positioned nearly at the vehicle’s four corners. With a spacious interior cabin, a cockpit fit for your driving environment, interactive controls and gauges, and a large multi-information display, and a video camera, the Fine-N is truly designed with focus on driving requirements.

As a pioneer in making practical fuel cell hybrid vehicles (FCHV), Toyota now shows the way to an even more advanced fuel cell hybrid system… Electric power from the Toyota FC Stack and a lithium ion battery drives a motor to power the vehicle, delivering acceleration on a par with a gasoline engine vehicle.” from here.
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In early January, Japan celebrates twenty-year-olds becoming adults. Coming of Age Day is time for them to dress up in kimonos, gather at the local city hall, and listen to bureaucrats tell them how important ‘adults’ are.

The new adults usually get drunk before, after, and sometimes during the ceremony since they’re now legal drinking age. They can also vote at the age of twenty, so in this clip we see some right-wing black busses shouting their opinions to the newly christened voters. The wing-nuts don’t like Communists, kissing in public, or parked cars in their way.

This Coming of Age Day is probably like any other; kimonos, rabbit suits, and big black busses..
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Originally released in 2003.

I always thought this was strange, in an interesting sort of way, the way the events girls at the Tokyo Motor Shows would attempt to give each photographer a few seconds of attention; showing all their ranges of expressions in a short period of time; sultry, innocent, aggressive, and demure all in five seconds.

I’m sure in photos it looks fine, but in person, it always looks a little strange; like the girls suffer from a mild form of turrets..

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