Japan

Nearly every night on the highways around Tokyo, racers set off to prove themselves. With incredibly powerful cars and a sort of reverence to street racing, it’s pretty fascinating. It’s still quite an underground aspect to Japanese car culture, but, thanks to YouTuber Aldo Agunday, we’re getting a better look at it.

Summer holidays are going to leave a big impression on Gran Turismo fans spending their vacation in Japan, as Polyphony Digital recently took to its Pit Stop blog to announce it will be hosting special GT Sport public sessions over the course of the summer. Much like the previous event in the country, these will be open to the general public.

With the big reveal at the Copperbox Arena happening just weeks ago and GT Sport being playable at the Nurburgring 24H race, Polyphony Digital is aiming to keep up the momentum of coverage this weekend as Gran Turismo Sport will be shown off to Japanese audiences this Saturday at 11:15 local time.

Just days after the official announcement that GT Academy is returning to Australia this year, more news of the program’s international expansion has landed. According to the latest post on Polyphony Digital’s PitStop blog, GT Academy will be coming to Japan – for the first time – later this year.

Polyphony Digital, which has long been noted for its relatively small team of developers when compared to other video game production companies, is looking to recruit more staff members.

For the third year in a row, Red Bull has selected a Gran Turismo game for use in their “5G Challenge” – a high-profile competition the company hosts in Japan to find the country’s best gamers among 5 different genres: first-person shooters, racing, sports, fighting, and puzzle.

BMW Japan is organizing the Asian “BMW Z4 Challenge” for Gran Turismo 6.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7VHKUTeRjbU

Japanese consumers will get a bonus in the form of two 15th Anniversary Edition cars when they pre-order a copy of GT6 at a participating retailer, as announced on the official site earlier this week.

Gran Turismo 6 launch details were outlined for the Japanese market during a special PlayStation media session hosted by Sony on Monday.

“Red Bull 5G” is a national Japanese gaming competition which seeks to find the country’s best gamers in five different categories: first-person shooters, racing, sports, fighting, and puzzle.

Polyphony Digital has announced they’ll be showing off a special version of Gran Turismo at Sony’s “Dramatic 4K Experience” in Japan.

Well, this was certainly unexpected: Japanese news outlets are reporting that Polyphony Digital will be moving 50 of the company’s 150 employees more than 500 miles away, from Tokyo to Fukuoka, Japan. Apparently, the trauma Tokyo suffered during the Japan’s major earthquake earlier this year has prompted the move (Fukuoka is located in the western end of Japan, which generally sees less seismic activity compared to other parts of the country).

Winner of the first GT Academy and ILMC 2011 driver Lucas Ordonez has teamed up with other drivers on the grid at this weekend’s Spa Francorchamps 1000km to host a track-side Gran Turismo 5 challenge, benefiting victims of the devastating tsunamis in Japan.

Over Christmas, I’ve received a lot of questions about the free “Christmas gift cars” which were announced by Sony Japan a few weeks ago. As it turns out, the three free cars, which consisted of a Lamborghini Murcielago LP 640,  Jaguar XJ13, and a BMW M3 Coupe, were only made available in the Japanese PSN Store. Even if you have a Japanese PSN account, the cars can only be used with an actual Japanese copy of the game.