A passion that traveled across international boarders

I knew I wanted a boosted honda project again, more specifically for the track, so off I went to collecting parts!

I've been into tuning Hondata and Neptune systems off and on for a while, so I started my purchases there. Engine management is critical to a turbocharged honda application. Having the ability to modify any parameter necessary to control your build when needed related to fuel/ignition, component control, etc should be where you start your purchases.

I purchased the following from xenocron.com:

-Chipped/Socketted OBD1 VTEC ECU
-Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) output control components (installed by them)
-Demon 2 Module
-OBD2B to OBD1 conversion harness

Got them in the mail about a week later

A crucial accompaniment to engine management are your feedback sensors. One in particular, the wideband oxygen sensor and controller are required for a properly functioning setup.

Not just for tuning purposes, but Hondata and Neptune allow the wideband as an input to the ECU where it can actually allow for closed-loop fuel control during normal operating-temp engine running conditions. If you are cruising down the highway, the ECU can use the new faster and more accurate wideband oxygen sensor to trim your fuel table values to stay at or near a specified target A/F ratio!

This sensor/controller is critical to allowing you to build a streetable tune to get your car to the dyno after the build.

Knowing the amount of money I had, not a lot, I wanted to see what products were out there as of lately. When I was more involved back in the day, the AEM components were the star of the show for what you needed to control a wideband oxygen sensor.

But I happened to stumble upon a website called "wide-band.com". These guys have some very interesting and SUPER cost effective devices. Firstly, the wideband controller they sell is a TINY standalone board.

It is a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) with all of the necessary components on it to drive a wideband sensor, the heater circuit as well as interpret the data feedback from the sensor. There are solder tabs for sensor input/output, as well as a 0-5V analog output that runs the scaling of the necessary A/F ratio and fuel type you choose. You can then use this as an input to a A/F gauge or standalone engine management system to interpret and display live A/F ratio. They also sell gauges with this board built in, and still retain all the output benefits!

I purchased the following from wide-band.com:

-2x APSX Wideband D1 Digital Wideband Control Module (they were $20, come on! I like spares!)
-1x APSX G1 LED AFR Display (Blue) for the DIY board
-Bosch LSU 4.2 wideband oxygen sensor (P/N 17014, ordered from NAPA through work for discount)


I purchased the following from xenocron.com:
-Bosch LSU 4.2 wideband 6-way connector/pin kit


Everything here was under $120 bucks.

Sorry this has taken so long to respond to, I posted a follow up response to the above entry that was flagged by the site for "review" by site administrators. It has never posted, I waited for a month almost before responding to this in hopes the flagged post would show up.

It has not, so to continue along with the above post I expanded my engine management purchases to include a wideband oxygen sensor setup. I'm cheap and I like DIY projects, so when I did a little bit of research I came across these items from a company called wide-band dot com:







In the past, the AEM equipment was king and was all you could really get as an average aftermarket wideband solution for on-the-car operation. But this other company builds a DIY wideband controller board that is super tiny, and you simply wire in the required inputs, and it provides outputs to their own little displays. I literally spent less than $40 bucks on a wideband controller and gauge (without sensor) going this route, and I can say I am very satisfied with my purchase.

This controller is compatible with the widely available Bosch LSU 4.2 wideband oxygen sensor, and offers in-field sensor calibration! For $20 bucks, it's a no brainer.

I needed to purchase a Bosch female connector that would allow me to plug the sensor into the controller, so I turned to xenocron dot com for this. They sell a user-pinned shell for these sensors for just this occasion for $15 bucks:



After purchasing all these items, I assembled everything together. I built a wiring harness for the wideband sensor, leaving ample amounts to run the sensor wherever it may end up on the car. I soldered wires with ample excess to the board, in all locations I figured I would need. I used an old cheap RC car electronic speed controller case to house the wideband controller in, notched the plastic sides for the wires to protrude out of and secured the assembly with hot glue:



Of course I tested it before securing it to the case first:



This is what the finished wideband controller assembly looks like:

After testing the wideband controller and display and packaging the controller in its case, I needed to find a place to mount the 3 digit LED display that works with the controller. Because it was so small, I thought it would be a cool idea to mount it here:













I secured the display to the instrument cluster outer frame with hot glue first, let it cool then carefully cut the glue between the frame and the display with an exacto knife to remove the display. Once removed, I superglued the display back to the spot in which it was located. This way, the display was rigidly attached to the hot glue through the superglue, but I could build up the hot glue safely around the display to further reinforce the display's attachment to the outer frame. The hot glue will give the display a bit of "give" for movement under vibration conditions. The frame also fits very snugly in the cluster lens and the display is actually well supported within the square cutout in the cluster background itself.

Before closing up the controller case, I built a harness coming off the controller to wire the display to, to facilitate connecting the display to the controller without having to take the controller case apart. I added two connectors to the end of the controller display harness, as well as the harness wiring that came already attached to the display. This way, I could remove the display if needed from the car without having to disturb the location I mount the controller to. You can see the display wiring and the connectors here, with everything powered up to check if it all works:

One piece of advice to anyone wishing to perform this type of mod to your cluster, you only get ONE shot at cutting these plastics. It was very difficult in a lot of places to cut the way I wanted, considering how old these plastics are they are very brittle! A hot knife and a dremel are your friends here! Be careful.

At this point, I had also bought an oil pressure gauge as well as a boost pressure gauge from wideband dot com. The boost gauge contains a 0-5 volt output, and is rated at 30 PSI, so there is some flexibility here coupled with the Demon 2 and the available inputs for datalogging purposes when tuning. You cant go wrong with a digital programmable boost gauge for $35 bucks! I also bought a 99-00 civic cluster bezel gauge pod for mounting the two important items.

Also at this time, I modified a 91 Prelude SI steering wheel and the 99-00 stock steering wheel by cutting the hub off the 99-00 wheel and welding it on to the 91 prelude wheel. I love the stock GT type 3 spoke steering wheel look from the 88-91 preludes so this was a must-attempt modification for me. I even found a way to retain the 88-91 clockspring so the horn button is still functional as well as the two cruise buttons (which will be used as inputs to the ECU for controlling different ECU features). I also bought a cheap knock off Apex-I turbo timer setup and mounted it to a bracket I built just behind the clockspring assembly. I was able to use the 3M Command strip velcro/hook and loop strips to attach the display to the bracket. It holds really well even to this day, and is removable if necessary:




I didn't like the way the knock off Apex-I turbo timer handled the transition from key-off to maintaining engine running (there was a huge activation delay during key-off) so I ended up eventually replacing the knock off Apex-I turbo timer with a real HKS timer that I got for a deal on xenocron:

At this point, the dashboard equipment was functioning the way I wanted with the stock ECU, now it was time to install the Demon 2 P06 to the car using an OBD2B to OBD1 conversion harness. You can see from the picture that I ended up mounting the wideband controller to the engine ECU plexiglass cover using 3M Command hook and loop strips. 3M Command strips work incredible for holding stuff like this in place, and allow for easy removal if needed:




I was ready to install the ECU, I figured now was as good a time as any to order my larger injectors needed for the turbocharged setup and get the engine running and tuned in stock form before doing anything mechanically different to the engine. I purchased Nikki 520CC saturated injectors from Performance Fuel Injection. They came with un-pinned connector shells with terminal ends so I could replace the connector shells from the stock harness with new connector shells. They came flow balanced and tested:




For this project I was using a D16Z6 intake manifold that was roughly ported by a friend, but I wanted to retain the D16Y8 fuel rail. I was able to successfully adapt the D16Y8 rail to the D16Z6 manifold, clean everything required and install the fuel injectors:



The whole reason for using this intake manifold is because my friend who gave it to me already port matched the intake to the throttle body you see on it. This is a 62MM throttle body from a B18C5, one of the largest stock honda throttle bodies you can get! And it was free!


Since I knew I was going to be needing additional fuel volume for the turbocharged setup, I started to focus on the fuel system. I have always wanted to run a fuel cell in a track/street car, so I decided I was going to make that happen. I purchased a Walbro GSL392 fuel pump, a cheap generic ebay fuel pressure regulator, an RJS 5 Gallon fuel cell with foam inserts already installed as well as generic barb fittings, steel 3/8" brake line, hose clamps, etc all for setup, proof of concept and testing purposes to dial in the fuel system before deciding what type of fuel lines, etc I was going to go with on the final vehicle.

I setup and bench tested the fuel pump and the aftermarket regulator before installing anything on the car to make sure the devices were capable of operating:






Once I knew what the specific output of the pump was in terms of volume without a regulator and the amperage draw with no restriction, I added the regulator in series to push the pump to make higher pressure on the bench so I could take measurements and make sure the ebay regulator was working properly. I also don't trust ebay regulators/gauges, so I tee'd in a real fuel pressure gauge to see how far off the ebay gauge might be. It was surprisingly off by only 2 PSI, but at least I now had a baseline of where to trust on its scale when adjusting it.

After testing, I was ready to install to the fuel cell. I wanted to remove the fuel tank under the car so that I could mount flat aluminum sheeting under the car eventually to prevent undercar air turbulence and streamline air flow under the car, so I went with mounting the fuel cell in the trunk. I built a brace to span the spare tire cavity, which served as a mounting point for a scrap fuel tank support/strap setup I found at work in the scrap bin. This is what it looked like installed in the car for mock up/testing purposes:








I also remote mounted the battery at this time. I wanted it in the trunk on the passenger side of the vehicle, so I built a frame for the battery to sit on, bolted the frame to the car so it was removable and threaded rod welded to the frame for a hold down device. I used a piece of a truck mud flap cut up with holes drilled into it as a temporary hold down, made out of really solid rubber.

I also used a factory honda ABS pump motor relay/fuse block as my walbro fuel pump relay/fuse device mounted in the back of the car. I simply used the existing vehicle fuel pump wiring as a trigger to control this remotely mounted relay block I placed near the battery. The ABS pump fuse and relay are rated at 40 amps, plenty of capacity for this fuel pump. Everything is close to the battery, so wiring the aftermarket devices became easier to work with. I built harnesses for everything, covered it in loom and made it as decent as possible. The fuel pump also conveniently mounted up perfectly against the back of the fuel tank strap frame.

I installed the fuel pressure regulator in parallel to the supply/return circuit so I could simulate stock max fuel pressure with this pump without overwhelming the stock fuel rail pressure regulator. I set the pump pressure, primed the circuit and checked for leaks, all ok. Fuel system setup and testing went very smooth.

I also bought a super cheap $30 ebay 4-2-1 header just for wideband sensor testing purposes. I wanted to operate the entire new engine management and fuel system as a whole with the wideband input to create a decent base tune that the engine would run on well in stock N/A form before doing any of the forced induction modifications to it.

I installed the header, the intake with the new injectors, new fuel filter, wideband sensor, ECU and configured everything using Neptune. I downloaded a stock D16Y8 basemap just to start with from the Neptune RTP repository, and flashed the Demon 2 with it. I specified my injector change in parameters, but kept almost everything stock since I was simulating stock conditions on purpose. Here's a (really crappy badly lit) picture of the Neptune interface and the fuel/ignition tables after the flash, before I started customizing the interface and setting scales, etc:




After flashing, specifying the injector change, etc, I went to finally fire up the engine. It freaking started on the two revolutions and idled perfectly with no hesitation, nothing. The wideband was operating correctly, and its feedback response time once fully warmed up was incredibly fast for such a cheap controller.

After playing with a few other settings, and seeing how everything worked together once it was allowed to run for 30-45 minutes, I was satisfied with my base tune configuration for what will ultimately run the engine on start up when the turbocharged components/goodies are fully installed.

So, I guess I left out a little bit of cool info regarding what turbocharger is going to be installed on this car. They belong to the Garrett GT32 series, actual Model number is a GT3271. These are journal bearing turbos but the center housings are watercooled. I actually found these turbos sitting on a shelf at one of my jobs collecting dust. I asked the owner if I could buy/have them. He asked me how much they were worth to me, I said $50 bucks, and he was cool with it! (I still can't believe he sold me two very healthy, good condition mechanically functional Garrett turbochargers for $50 lol!)

They came off of very low mileage 5.0L diesel engines that had bottom end problems (factory connecting rod issues) but the procedure was to return the blocks to the OEM but keep the heads for reassembly. The company found it to be cheaper (apparently) to just replace the engine assembly entirely, in regards to getting the truck on the road faster and keeping the customer happy, so my shop had these two heads from the beginning of this recall with turbos on them just sitting on a shelf. I knew nothing about these turbos, I just knew they weren't VNT/VGT so I could actually play with them on something without having to build a VGT controller of some type (I didn't want this to turn into a 4th year engineering degree final project lol).

I took them home, and tore them down for inspection:





As expected, from judging shaft play by feel and visual inspection before tear down, internal inspection shaft journal/bearing wear were extremely minimal. Due to the length of time they had been sitting, I decided to buy a rebuild kit in order to replace the CHRA seals, piston rings, thrust plate and bearings. I found one online at Kinugawa Turbo. The rebuild kit was like $60, and came with everything even new bolts. Great piece of mind. I am going to buy another one soon just to have on hand.



I also knew I would need an oil line/drain kit, so I bought a super generic T3 compatible ebay special:



The exhaust manifold decision was a tough one for me, because I'm all about helping things flow as efficiently as they can especially when talking about engine air flow. But, the two things that picked at me the hardest when determining which manifold to buy for me was price (I'm cheap) and knowing how commonly the cheap equal length tubular style manifolds crack at the collector flange. Another thing was weight, this turbo is really heavy! I do not trust the weight of this thing to solely hang on only the manifold flange, which directly yanks at and stresses the exhaust manifold head studs. That pretty much crossed off the cheap tubular style manifold right there. Until I can afford to get a really nice heavy walled properly fabricated equal length tube style manifold, the cast iron log style was my ultimate choice for my budget and needs, $45 on ebay got me taken care of.



I was also converting this turbo from an internally wastegated setup to external, so I did some research on the different offerings of 38mm flanged wastegates available. I watched a Tial video stress testing a cheap Tial knockoff external wastegate under load and cycles, that video pretty much sold me on wanting to stay brand name. I bought a genuine Tial 38mm flanged wastegate from a buddy who built a turbo'd B16, ran it lean and blew it up. It had less than 2 hours run time on it! He sold it to me for $40, I was happy.





I had a parts D16Z6 head/manifold laying around, so I bolted the manifold/wastegate to it to see how it looked, oh man it made me want to start plumbing it onto the car! I attempted to bolt the turbo to it just to see it all together, but the turbo made the head lift up even with the intake manifold on the head and a 5LB hammer resting on the intake! I'm not kidding this turbo is a heavy item!



To help with my worry over the weight hanging on the head, I am going to fabricate turbo support linkages that connect the turbo to the block at an angle to help take up some of the stress the manifold will be under. These linkages must allow movement as when the turbo heats up the position of the turbo will change. I feel I have a good solution for this, and I will share what I fabricated once I get the pictures up here (I'm trying to go in chronological order, and I'm getting ahead of myself!)

This post should hold me over for another day or so haha!

One of the things I am going to mention in short, leaving out the nitty gritty details from this post for the purpose of not wanting to relive a terrible experience had on this civic, was going from disc/drum to installing 4 wheel disc brakes. (Ever had to remove anything brake related from a northerner US/Canadian vehicle before? You need $50 worth of oxy/acetylene before any fastener will even think about cooperating with you! Enough said!)


A friend of mine gave me a 4 wheel disc brake setup from a JDM 1996 Integra Type R, 4 bolt 114.3mm offset hubs with the white spoke ITR rims to go along with them:











This setup was honestly really awesome but highly impractical for this project. It was plug and play on this civic (other than adjustable rear compensator arms), nothing needed to be modified to fit. I installed them on this Civic, purchased all necessary parts, e-brake cables, etc. to bring them fully functional on the car. The calipers and wheel bearings were still OK, and didn't need to be replaced or rebuilt but it DID need front brake pads and rotors all around.


This is where things got difficult. As much research as I did trying to find USDM parts to cross over, there were no really cut and dry answers as to which parts crossed where. It seemed most likely that I would have needed to order certain parts from a UK or Japanese Honda dealer and have them shipped over here. Like I said, not practical. I was able to find rotors worked from Prelude/Accord stuff (luckily I had the OEM ones to bring with me to the parts store to match up with), but brake pads were a challenge. Forget about getting calipers if needed, they did not appear to cross in USDM.

The only front pads I found that worked with the calipers on this setup were from an Accord but they had almost 1/8" too much friction material on each pad and caused the caliper not to fit within it's bracket. The pads for the ITR are apparently designed thin from factory to allow for a harder/denser friction material to be used which takes more heat and exhausts it much better than a pad that was thicker (or so the rumors go, not really sure on this one to be honest, could not find a completely straight answer but it seemed logical to some extent).


I shortly realized that I could literally buy a USDM 4 wheel disc shell from someone, use the brakes for the swap AND (on the wish list) purchase a Wilwood big brake setup all for much less hassle than trying to get OEM type parts to "hopefully" work together. Staying with an SI based 4 wheel disc setup in USDM parts would allow for plug and play USDM support from the aftermarket high performance brake companies. The same cannot be said confidently for these ITR pieces.

The Wilwood front big brake kit with 12" 2 piece rotors and 4 piston calipers is $700. Hell, a decent set of front shocks and springs are more than that! I would have spent half that doing an OEM brake job on the ITR stuff. Wilwood also sells a rear single piston kit option, but most people I know forego buying this and get new/reman rear OEM calipers with some good quality pads and rotors instead, and balance the braking monster in the front and the softer OEM setup in the rear with an adjustable brake bias controller.


It was after weeks of messing with and researching the pros and cons of this ITR brake setup that I realized that I would have much better flexibility and aftermarket support if I just stayed with an OEM Honda USDM 4 wheel disc solution. I held off on buying any additional brake consumables for the ITR setup, and decided to put that money towards a USDM 4 wheel disc setup if I came across one for a decent price.

So after getting the engine running in stock form with the upgraded fuel system, engine management, ITR brake setup, etc, I found myself moving from where I was in Ontario Canada back to North Carolina for work. The car was in running condition, so I was able to get it on a rented car truck/trailer setup for the drive to the US.

I had the car registered to me and in my name, but I had no intentions of keeping it street legal therefore the hassle of title transfers/customs/taxes were not going to be an issue as long as it was not going to be registered in the US.

Sure enough, got to the border and the customs official did a quick search of the trunk and inside the car to make sure we were not smuggling anything and we were on our way to good ol' NC.

The amount of time I had tinkering/researching on this car from when I bought it to moving to the US was approximately 200 hours at this point but it was still so far from anything I was comfortable with. I had hope that I had a huge hurdle out of the way (engine management, 4 wheel discs, etc.) that other aspects of the car would be fairly straightforward and more labor hours than anything else.

It was still a LONG way to go before having anything that would be considered track ready in my mind. At least a couple years anyways! I didn't have much money to throw at it all the time, so I paced myself and appreciated working on it as I was able to allow.

As with all moving, money is usually tight for a while during the transition period as everyone starts to settle in to new surroundings. I didn't touch the civic for a WHILE because when we moved in, winter had just started coming. I would have worked on it, but I didn't have money to buy a space heater or something to bring the garage to comfortable levels so I just waited until things started to get warmer.

One of the nice things of my move was my garage space almost doubled from what it used to be. I was able to have the car inside and still have a LITTLE bit of room to move around.

During the cold period, one of my friends was trying to clear up some space around his house. He had some civic project vehicles and tons of parts, etc and asked if I wanted to buy them. He was selling two complete 92-95 civic hatchback shells with clean bodies and titles, one an SI and the other a DX. The SI had 4 wheel discs and the DX had disc/drum, both were roller shells. Included with the shells was a B16A with a GSR transmission, an engine stand, random parts/pieces, etc all for $1200.

I would have started giving him money right then and there, but before I knew about this I had already poured every last spare penny I saved on a trip to Japan that I have been wanting to go on since I was 16 years old.

He told me he would hold on to these things for me as long as I needed, and that the offer still stood. I told him that I would start getting him money here and there once I got back from Japan and he was cool with that.

I didn't do much to my white civic during that time because it was so cold in the garage, but I was SUPER excited to know that civic hatchbacks were in my future! I have never had a 92-95 civic hatchback chassis before, but I knew they were always the most popular platform to use in FWD road course racing due to their lightweight, short wheel base and crazy aftermarket support.

Technically these shells were an upgrade from the coupe, even though the coupe was newer. They had less rust and body issues that the Canadian coupe, AND one of them had 4 wheel USDM discs! This was the direction I was now going to go, my plan from here with this knowledge and these hatchback shells was to pull every possible useful part off the 99-00 civic coupe and scrap that shell in order to build ONE good car out of 3.

My outlook was as follows:

1. 99-00 civic had good engine, dash, chassis and engine wiring harness along with all the other modifications I did to it. Pull all of that stuff off to potentially use as needed with the hatchback shells.

2. With 2 identical year shells, only difference being trim model, I now had a backup shell in case something happened with the main car like I wrecked in a race or something. I was going to build one car all out, and keep the other shell around just in case.

3. I now had 2 engine combinations to work with over time. I already started with an outlook of building the D16 for turbo, but now I also had a B16 to play with. I love the idea of having two engine/transmission combinations with different induction systems to be able to hot swap in and out of a car depending on the type of racing you are doing. I decided I was going to build the D16Y8 for turbo and build the D16Y7 transmission to suit the power level, as well as build the B16 for NA high RPM power and build the GSR transmission to compliment it.

This being the plan, I started to get to work stripping the 99-00 coupe!

I pulled the front end apart, and just for the hell of it I test fit the turbo and manifold to the head to see what it looked like all mounted up not trying to fall off a bench:




The garage




Pulling the ITR rear trailing arms off the car:




Fuel cell removed, no rear wheels!



Stripping the interior:




Moving the damn thing outside with a moving dolly, prybar, ratchet strap and my pickup bumper:

Shortly after the stripping/scraping of the 99-00 civic shell, I finally started on my trip to Japan!

I've been studying Japanese since I was 16 years old. I'm not the best at the language, as you really only retain what you use (not many Japanese folks in Greensboro NC!) but through my off and on self study of the language I can read/write fairly well but my speaking it not the greatest.

I was terribly addicted to anime from age 15 until probably 22-23 years old, and my yearning of Japanese culture stemmed from anime. What REALLY got me wanting to visit Japan, as any car guy could attest to, was discovering a little anime series called Initial D. You literally cannot say anything bad about that anime, Japanese culture AND cool cars? It was literally the catalyst that made me want to learn Japanese and someday visit/live there.

I had no itinerary on my trip, as I have never been there before! I had no idea what it was going to be like, so I felt it was best that I didn't pressure myself to do certain things, and to just take things in as they came up. BUT, I had a few must "to-do" things to try:

1. Visit Hokkaido, the northern most island of Japan just to say I've been there

2. Rent a car and drive to an Initial D location in Japan.


Here is my completed "travelling to Japan" starter kit:



I had to source all of those things together. I needed Japanese Yen, as Japan is still a highly cash based society AND you don't want to travel anywhere without at least $1000 in their local currency as a rule of thumb. I purchased an International Driving Permit from my local AAA branch, this allowed me to rent a car in Japan. I already had a passport, and I wanted to ride the bullet train to Hokkaido so I bought a Japan Rail Pass. This pass allowed you to travel on any JR train line free of charge, and make unlimited reservations on the bullet trains. You have to purchase this pass OUTSIDE of Japan, they are NOT for sale in Japan other than 2 times during the year!

This is what $1100USD in JPY looks like:



I stayed in a capsule hotel for the week, it cost $420USD for my entire 10 day stay. For those of you who don't know what a capsule hotel is, look it up on Google. I chose it because I didn't want to have to have the option of having a nice hotel room to retreat to, I wanted to force myself to get out there and see stuff! It really was a great experience, and the hotel was very clean and well put together. Everyone was very respectful of everyone else's privacy and was considerate. Here are a few pictures of my first night in Tokyo:


Outside my hotel, the Bay Hotel in the 日本橋/にほんばし (Nihonbashi) district of greater Tokyo. I was 30 minutes from the famous あきはばら (Akihabara) district:




What it looked like inside the capsule, just enough room to sleep:




I had to perform the Japan mod to my laptop power supply. They only run 2 prong appliances in Japan, there are no ground terminals in outlets:

One of my favorite parts of going there was honestly the English translations on some of their products. It seems if it has English on it, it's cool, but this sponge seemed like it was trying to get to 3rd base on me even before it got out of the package lol:




Dinner from a lawsons convenience store. It was like 3AM at this point, and I was starving after I started to wind down and unpack. It was the only place open I could find close by (Chicken and veggie rice ball chicken cutlet and egg sandwich):






Ready for bed finally at like 4AM (inside the capsule):




Another Japanese tradition is keeping shoes outside of buildings. The ideology is "keep the dirt of the busy day out of the place where consider home", as well as "Just keep the dirt outside" lol. They give you a key to a locker for you to put your shoes, and they provide slippers for you to walk around in while inside the building. The slippers never go outside, and your shoes never come inside! It is a good idea honestly! But, these were the largest slippers they had and I don't have the biggest feet haha! Japanese folks traditionally have smaller feet compared to certain western cultures, I tried to jam my toes into these things but this was as far as they got and my heels were literally touching the ground:





I have plenty more to share from Japan if anyone is interested, or wanting to know more of what it's like in preparation for a similar trip! Just PM me and I will be happy to share!