Going about our day to day lives, we’re constantly thrown splashes of advertisements for products and services from businesses eager to extract some dollars out of us. At times, we have no option but to hand over our hard earned dollars to a single company as they’re the only ones who offer the products or services we desire. However, for the majority of items, there are commonly multiple organsations out there who offer what we wish; and it’s a simple matter of research to determine which companies offer the best solution to our requirements.

When it comes to modifying vehicles from Honda’s arsenal, a ton of Honda-exclusive aftermarket companies exist. Despite this – and excluding Mugen who are more of an OEM, in-house tuning division – the duopoly that is Spoon Sports and J’s Racing are usually the first two companies which appear in my brain when I think of aftermarket Honda tuners.

Spoon and J’s Racing’s soul mission is to create parts to turn ordinary Honda-badged vehicles into machinery capable of reliably attacking the race track. Although both companies have the same desire – to sell parts to enhance your Honda’s acceleration, stopping, handling and aesthetic characteristics – Spoon and J’s Racing go about it in different ways. While the former is more akin to an OEM-grade approach in their tuning philosophy as written here, J’s Racing takes a more in-your-face approach with their products and styling – loud and aggressive springs to mind when I see parts and demo cars from the famed Osaka-based tuner.

After losing count on the number of Okonomyaki and Takoyaki consumed, visiting the Asahi factory to see how Japan’s most popular beer is made, and ticking off other boxes on the things-to-do-in-Osaka list, I knew I couldn’t mark my Osaka trip as complete without a visit to J’s Racing.

Similar to most workshops and other businesses located in Japan, space is a luxury so companies only have so much room to display their products. J’s Racing was no exception, with the office and show room a little crammed but you’d quickly forget about the confines as their were lots of interesting and attention grabbing items proudly displayed.

The trophies cabinet was mighty impressive, with accolades from industry giants such as JAF, Option 2, and my favourite – Hot Version.

J’s Racing was founded in 1988 by Junichi Umemoto – which coincidentally – is where the J’s in the title comes from. After a certain high profile incident in 2011, company operations were handed over to the present Director, Hisaaki Murakami.

A couple of J’s Racing enhanced Hondas were sleeping in the parking area, maximising every possible square inch of real estate. Hidden within was a super clean Phoenix Yellow EK9 Civic Type R.

Kazuo Miki – responsible for international marketing at J’s Racing – spotted me at this point and kindly asked if I wanted to have a peer inside of the workshop, which of course I enthusiastically welcomed. J’s Racing typically focuses their R&D for models based on local market demand and it seems that in Osaka, that demand is for Jazz/Fit and S2000 parts. In saying that, the company still produces some parts – such as their famed RS/RR FX-Pro Titanium cat-back exhausts – for earlier models such as the Civic, Integra and NSX.

The S2000 pair below both wore J’s Racing’s Type GT eleven-piece body kit but had different rear wings installed. The black example sported the more traditional Type 2 design, while the yellow car wore a newer swan neck mounted design. Kazuo-san also confirmed that the yellow S2000 with the obligatory J’s Racing anime-themed livery was the car often featured in Hot Version’s Gunsai Touge battle videos.

Upon departing J’s Racing, I took some final photos and came to the sad realisation that very soon, I would be on a plane back to Adelaide and back to the realities that is normal life.

I thanked Kazuo-san for his kind hospitality and waved good bye to him as well as J’s Racing as I made my way back to the hustle and bustle of Dotonbori. This post also signals a good bye to the Skibeemo-Does-Japan series. Although it took almost twelve months to complete, I sincerely hope you enjoyed this mini part series here on Skibeemo. Anyone who’s been to Japan often wants to return as soon as they come home so I’m certain that a sequel to this series will occur in the future. Until then, thank you for reading.