S.O. Life: 365 days

On Saturday my girlfriend, Stacey and I had our first anniversary and to celebrate she had booked us in to a restaurant but wouldn't tell me where. It turned out to be a new place right near my house called, Moon sha. Its a Japanese restaurant that does Sushi, has a karaoke bar upstairs and most importantly does Teppanyaki!!

Teppanyaki is basically you sitting on your butt around the grill while the chef cooks everything fresh in front of you and makes it a bit of a show at the same time.

First off the chef flambés the grill.

Then he cooks your egg fried rice, bean shoots and all your meat. I had steak, swordfish, scallops and BBQ chicken and Stace had king prawns, salmon and chicken. We both got an awesome mi-so soup to!

Oh, and I love Asahi beer!


Eating with chop sticks, I got it nailed son!

Here's a video of the chef juggling eggs, I love the way he cracks them into the bowl!



And one of the flameau!



After the meal we headed out for some cocktails. Teppanyaki followed by White Russians: The perfect night!

I think the SO Christmas party has to be at the Teppanyaki grill followed by karaoke!

The next night we headed into town for a ride on the Derby wheel.


At 100ft it's high enough to see the whole of the city.


The view of the town hall from the very top.

The reflection of the wheel in the windows of the new Quad building (an art gallery and cinema in Derby) was amazing.

Where's wally?



Roll on the next anniversary.. I can't wait!

Sweet sweet music

Every muso has their favourite tunes, every fat kid has their favourite cakes and every petrol-head has their favourite engines.

These are my favourites and favourite examples. I think I'll start with the biggest and finish with the smallest.


Hemi V8: This is Jimmy White's Hemi coupe. The idle alone is enough to make you tingle but when he puts the hammer down it sounds like Satan's angry mother is under his right foot.




1JZ turbo straight 6: Bonbon's old JZX81. 500bhp of home built drift championship winning weaponry driven with some good ol' UK manfoot.




S20I6 N/A straight 6: Hakosuka Skyline GTR. This will forever sit in my list of dream cars to drive. The most I've managed so far is sitting in a parked one, giggling like a school girl. One day though..




SR20DET: It's no revelation to say that a good sounding SR is a rare thing but, this SR, freshly built and tuned by by garage BOSO for Patrick Mordaunt sounds the fucking tits!




4AGE: I can't even remember how I found this little video. It's one half in-car, one half outside and just a really good example of a AE86 being driven like it should.




A12: This little thing blows my mind. Tomei must have some kind of black magic going on with this engine because if the figures in the video are to be believed this little carbed 1.3 from the 70s is kicking out a whopping 170ps. It seems so responsive and yeah.. sounds fucking awesome.

Starlet Grand Cup

I can't stop watching this. It's 7 minutes of screaming K-series, on the ragged edge old school goodness. The footage is great with loads of in-car shots making for some properly exciting racing. Enjoy.

Ghetto vent-low

I see this car everyday when I walk into uni and it makes me smile every time! It belongs to long time friend of SO, Bryce. The car has the Cali look nailed and seeing it clean and rollin through derby in the winter is awesome when everything else is drab and dirty.

It started out as a real shitter..

..but with a lot of hard work and some sensible mods, like good looking steels and coilovers, Bryce has transformed the car in to a real attention grabber that's easy on the student pocket.

An E30 is next for the Bryce Cali treatment if one can be found for the right price. Cant wait to see it when it's done!

What the..?

I don't know what this is, how I found it, or how the hell I'd get my mits on a copy of it? From what I can gather.. it's a documentary following a 4AGE'd KE10 on it's adventures through Thailand. Looks great fun.

Snapshot:

This S30 just smashed it's belly into my all time top five cars with ease.

There's a great collection of photos and a much better feature than I could ever write over on Motormavens. My favourite quote from their feature..

"It’s awesome how something so simply done can ooze so much amazing style!" Andy Sapp

And this is the builder and driver's fantastic blog, that we've been a fan of for some time here.. Oh, you speak English?

I LOVE IT.

Out of the dark and into the light

I've missed you guys!

After being without the internet for weeks now I've finally got the connection sorted in my new house.

To cure my withdrawal symptoms I've been watching some of my favourite videos and thought I'd share them. You've probably seen them all before but they are all awesome and need watching again.

First up some Sekia hills.. just to remind us all how it should be done.



Next up is some cool streeto from the hills of Japan. To remind me I need to get back out onto the Buxton touge, although the Secret Seven might be a bit to big for it.



And finally..




Right I'm off for a drive!

Backwards entry you say!?

Entry at a seemingly unrecoverable angle and then carries that angle AND speed through.. Amazing.