Heavy Love Award愛が重いで賞

That’s right, I won the award for heavy love. I entered my Honda Integra into the Honda Online Festival at work this year and I won the category of heavy love. There were 150 entries and over 8000 votes. So it was actually pretty cool to win. I just had to make a one page explanation of why my car is appealing.

Its, of course, all in Japanese. But my number one appeal point is that its not a Honda Fit with an automatic transmission. Of course there are many great things I love about the car, but I was trying to be funny so I highlighted the fact that it was NOT a Honda Fit. And at the same time sending a bit of a jab at the lack of interesting Honda products in recent years. Then I added the fact that my kids think its such a cool car even though its nothing too special. All that together pulled in the votes and I won.

The winners got to be interviewed on Youtube Live by a some popular race drivers in Japan.

I was pretty nervous since the interview was to be in Japanese. I spent the whole week working with my sensei about all the questions that they might ask me so I was prepared. Its posted on Youtube now with a whopping 40 views! I think there were more when it was live maybe. Sorry no subtitles, but anyone can watch if they want. My interview starts from 14:00.

Overall it was a really great experience. And actually I had a few people contact me privately telling me it is a cool car and just wanted to talk about cars. So it turned out to be a great way to network with other car guys. One guy that contacted me was actually on the project team back in the mid 90’s that designed my Integra model. So I thought that was actually really cool to talk to him. In summary, I came to Japan, bought a car, won a car contest, and got interviewed by a popular race driver. As a car guy, this is one of my life’s greatest achievements.