We went to the Hollywood Bowl to see Grease Sing-a-Long & Sha Na Na was the musical opener. Frenchy (Didi Conn) was also there.
This was my first time seeing Grease & while watching the race scene, of course it would be that scene, I noticed Han’s Garage.
Tokyo Drift screen shot you can see the roof shape for Han’s Garage.
Grease screen shot above in the upper right corner is Han’s Garage.
Two years ago today I went to the filming location for Han’s Garage (The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift) in Los Angeles, California. It was very cool as I’m a huge fan and I’ve met the actor who plays Han, Sung Kang. They did a great job of making you think it was in Tokyo, Japan.
I created a Gowalla checkin of the actual location used in Tokyo Drift for Han’s Garage. When you’re in L.A. go by and check it out.
Han’s Garage was the last one I found. The reason I found it was because the same garage (empty of course) was used in a recent episode of Life. When I saw him standing outside the garage I knew exactly what it was. Now came the hard part of finding it. Since Tokyo Drift (and Life) were filmed in Los Angeles, California I figured I could narrow it down because of the bridge that stands next to the garage. After about 3 hours I found it. And what’s funny is when I found it I didn’t wonder if that could be it I just knew. Click the image to see it in Google Maps.
Equally as difficult to locate was the harbor that Han’s gang would hang out and where Sean learned to drift. I probably spent 3 hours looking for it because I didn’t know if it was in Tokyo but I found it Los Angeles, California. As with most of the locations I just kept scouring Google Earth until I recognized. Click the image to see it in Google Maps.
When I originally looked for the parking garage I really thought it was in Tokyo. I examined all of the business signs from the scene on top of the parking garage. After few hours I gave up. A few weeks later I decided to look for it again. This time I looked online for clues as to where it might be. A tip that they used a closed Mall on Hawthorne Blvd led me to the Hawthorne Mall in Los Angeles, California. I immediately recognized the location and knew it was it.
The mall garage has several curved ramps but the curved ramp next the yellow pin is the drift ramp that was used in the movie. The lower garage was used in the racing scenes where they were drifting around the straight aways. Click the image to see it in Google Maps.
This location didn’t take as long to find because it was close to the soccer field in Tokyo. This is the bridge used in one of the last drifting scenes with Sean before his race with Morimoto. In the commentary Justin Lin mentions that while this scene looks CG it’s not. Click the image to see it in Google Maps.
