I’m back from the Karuizawa Meeting. It rained sideways for the entire time I was there but blue skies appeared just as I was getting onto the expressway to go home. Figures. I washed my car on friday for nothing. I was planning to take a lot of photos but because of the crappy weather it was hard to get motivated. By the time the sky cleared I was too tired and ready to go home. We arrived in Karuizawa early saturday morning and didn’t do too much except hang around the outlet mall (it’s a huge one) and the Karuizawa Ginza. Karuizawa is a great town but not much fun in the rain. The best part was seeing roadsters all over the place as they descended onto Karuizawa for the gathering. We decided to check into the ryokan early and relax. The ryokan we stayed at was the Hotel Tsuruya, one of the oldest ones in the area. They had some intriguing photos of Ryunosuke Akutagawa when he stayed at the hotel. The food and service was excellent and I highly recommend this ryokan.

(1) As I headed to the meet, the only cars on the streets were roadsters. Cool (2) The meeting took place at the Karuizawa Prince Hotel Ski Parking lots. The gates open at 8:30am. I arrived at 8:15am and already the main parking lot was almost full. They start earlier apparently. Check out my rear view mirror in this photo. Roadsters all around me!! (3)(4) I got the second last spot in the main parking lot, after that they started sending people to the second parking area.

(1) The rain was a real drag. No one could open their tops or bonnets to show off their tricked out cars. Many people stayed inside their roadsters waiting for the rain to stop (2) At around 10am they had the opening ceremony, introduced some VIPs including the Roadster development team from Mazda (3) Every year they have something that everyone signs. This year it was the hood from an NC

One of the events of the day was the annual children’s pedal car race. Of course all of them are roadsters. It took forever to get the race set up and started. There were rules that the parents had to be briefed about and the children would get impatient and start crying. The race itself was hilarious as it seemed that none of the kids understood the concept of a finish line so they went around in circles or backwards.

(1) Another photo of the main parking lot, check out the Shinkansen in the background. I had to wait 10 minutes for it (2) And a close up (3)(4) This is part of the second parking lot which was about two-thirds the size of the main one. It was filled to capacity with roadsters as well. There was also a third parking area that was the same size as the second one but I was too lazy to walk there. By looking at the license plates it was incredible to see that alot of people came from distant parts of Japan just to attend. Many roadsters from Hiroshima, Kyushu, Hokkaido etc.

The rain stopped around 2pm and it actually started to get sunny. I was ready to go home so decided to leave early and beat the traffic although staying to watch all these roadsters leaving at the same time was tempting. That would have been a sight to see!!

All in all, the meet was alright. To be honest, there were just too many roadsters to look at and with the crappy weather I was not in the mood. Let’s hope the weather is better next year.