Tokyo Motor Show

No one on the Tokyo Motor Show trip was very chipper that morning. It was rainy, with dense cloud cover- and maybe, like us, everyone on the bus was nursing pretty bad hangovers. Bad moods made worse by the "hour or hour and a half" drive taking close to three hours.

As Blake said on the MWR bus, the morning was not very good for his Morale or Welfare. It was a very good thing that once we arrived, there were many, many shiny things to distract us all.

To no one's surprise, there wasn't an American manufacturer in sight. Lots of Japanese (obviously) and European. We saw exactly one pickup truck, not many true SUVs and lots of cars that looked like this:

Lest you believe the entire event was like a real car show in miniature, there were some truly amazing, and expensive, cars there. Like a Lexus LFA, base price of $375,000, which is a steal considering that there will only be 500 and they are hand made, one car a day.

I also got to see a W12 engine, which is kind of two V6 engines stuck together. It's massive.

To me, though, the prototypes are where it's at. These things are sometimes very cool, sometimes very weird, but always interesting. Here are a few of our favorites.

Honda

Suzuki

Nissan Esflow

That last one really caught Blake's eye. A sporty-looking electric vehicle.

The prototypes were put on platforms or stages and there were huge crowds around every single one. I blended right in, caught up in the flow of pushing and elbowing. Blake, however, had the real advantage, being taller than almost everyone there. He was truly a man among boys that day.

Though it may sound like an oxymoron, the shoving and elbowing is good-natured. Hopefully I'll recover by spring, when the motorcycle show rolls into town.