Making the Pilgrimage to Spoon’s Latest Retail Outlet

Aside from all the bathhouses and major appliance stores, here’s another cool place that I visited while I was in Japan—Type One, the retail outlet for Spoon Sports. You see, it can get pretty busy over at their R&D facility, and since it’s difficult to sell parts and work on cars at the same time, they figured it’d be a heck of a lot easier to just open up another shop down the street. Here you can buy just about any part from the Spoon catalog, as well as a few new/used factory Honda parts—even Mugen—at really decent prices (I know, I picked up a pair of Vision corner lamps for only US$20). But here’s the really cool part: At Type One, you can literally walk in and buy any of the race cars in the showroom for your own personal use, even if that involves the word “scat,” and in that case, we’d rather not hear about it, anyway. On the day I was there, I got to see the same Integra Type R that Rich drove earlier this year, which had just sold that very week for US$32,000! The race-only EK9 sitting next to it (which you may also recognize) is going for a mere US$28,000, while a street-built del Sol EG2 has a price tag of only US$4,000. If you ever get a chance to hit up Tokyo, stop by and visit with the store manager, Takanori Uda, say “konichi-wa,” and mention Super Street for a non-existent discount. Just don’t call us crying when you get socked in the throat.