How does one formulate a game plan for seeing everything the world’s busiest car show has to offer? The answer is, you don’t.
Visiting Tokyo Auto Salon is battle of physical strength and mental fortitude. On just Friday and Saturday alone, I managed to clock over 59,000 steps on my phone’s health app. That’s 40 kilometers, spent walking around the halls. But that wasn’t even the hard part.
We all know how busy the Makuhari Messe convention center gets come TAS time – if you don’t, it’s usually in the hundreds of thousands of attendees – but as mentioned in our second Tokyo Auto Salon 2024 story, we won’t be at all surprised if this year’s official head count is an all-time record. Even the huge car parks reached capacity and had to be closed.
Once upon time, Friday morning at TAS was reserved for media and industry folk, but over the years it’s almost become as crazy as Saturday and Sunday, when everyone is welcome. This year, Friday was busier than ever right from 9:00am opening, and at 2:00pm, when the doors opened to public special ticket holders, it was a madhouse. And it pretty much stayed this way till Sunday closing at 6:00pm.
Early on in the day I realized there was no point waiting to get completely clear shots of cars using normal shutter speeds. I decided to go with the flow and slow the speeds down where needed. Accepting and adapting is all part of the Tokyo Auto Salon experience.
I could go on and on about the struggles of shooting at TAS, but at the end of the day, just being at the event makes up for any perceived pain. Like everyone else who attended this year, I was so excited to see the latest work from Japan’s performance tuners and custom car builders, and once again they did not disappoint.
Even better, I got to see snow in Tokyo for the very first time as I left the venue on Sunday night.
It’s only fitting that we share a gallery post as big as Tokyo Auto Salon 2024, and this one easily clocks in as our biggest gallery ever. Sorry not sorry to anyone who gets a cramp in their scrolling finger…
Rick Muda
Instagram: ardskellig
