Itasha Gathering in Odaiba, Tokyo on the 4th of October 2009. For those who are not aware, an Itasha is a car decked out with anime decals!

It translate to "painful car", which can be viewed as painfully embarrassing for the owner or painful to their wallets. It is a relatively new scene here in Japan and was very interesting to see. There were some nice example of nicely done up cars which also has the performance to match, so you can laugh at them until they whoop your ass on the track. There were close to 800 cars with not enough time to get the details but we did what was possible to show the event as a whole. Just about any type of vehicle participated in the event from VIP, Imports, Classics, K-Cars, Full tuned Sports, Wagons, Family and ECO.
Some may feel that the vehicles have been defaced and some may take a more light-hearted view. One thing that is for certain is that there are alot of creative ways to accent your vehicle with vinyl and many of the designs took alot of time and effort to create.
Hope you guy enjoy the pictures and get some creative inspiration out of them.


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More pictures can be found on our blog!!

"Ita-sha" meaning, "painful car" Its the lastest trend in the Akihabara distict of Japan. To those who are familar with the Anime Culture, Akihabara is the goldmine for videogames, anime, manga, and electronics, becoming a city for the famous groups of Otakus. Ita-sha are literally "painful cars" with exteriors pimped out in tacky illustrations or stickers of female animation characters. The otaku groups of these trend setters seem to be very different from the street scene of Japan. From a article they naturally feel seperated compared to those who are really hardcore to the street scene. The event at the famous Formula One venue was the second-largest itasha event after the Moesha Meeting in Gifu Prefecture last July that attracted 300 to 400 itasha. What do I like about them besides being the hardcore Closet Otaku like myself? Most of them are clean cars with a unqiue taste of style. Like I tell most tuners out there, if you want a nice looking car make sure it has a theme and story about it. It may have crazy colors in such that people may not understand, and they are do and don'ts in the scene but if you a story a behind it you should be proud to share it with others. What I like about the Ita-sha is that they are all simple people in their 20s and 30s, salaried employees and in possession of enough common sense to follow the traffic rules. They just like anime that much.