The first car we filmed on the ginkgo avenue was a black Lamborghini Countach, and it wasn't even the only one there. That is the thing about Meiji Jingu Gaien cars on a Sunday: the bar is set somewhere around "1970s Italian poster car", and it goes up from there. Our caption that day counted two Countachs and about twenty other Lamborghinis. Our phone caught one of them, which is the one we can show you.
Where the Gaien car spot is
Meiji Jingu Gaien is the outer garden of the Meiji Shrine, between Aoyama and Shinanomachi. Its famous avenue, Icho Namiki, runs about 300 metres between two rows of ginkgo trees towards the domed Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery. There is no organised meet. People who own interesting cars simply know that on weekend mornings this is where you drive slowly, park for a minute and let Tokyo look. Spotters line the kerb with cameras and phones, and the cars come in ones and twos.
The black Lamborghini Countach
Green leaves, a grey sky and that silhouette. The black Countach on our clip carries the big rear wing that buyers could order on the later cars, and it crept past at walking pace so everyone got their shot. Marcello Gandini drew the Countach at Bertone, Lamborghini built it from 1974 to 1990, and it is still the wedge every supercar gets measured against. Our clip is a small phone file, so the picture is soft, but there was no way we were leaving a Countach out.
The Ferrari 296 GTS on a cloudy day
On a greyer visit, a blue Ferrari 296 GTS came through with its folding hardtop down and a cream interior showing. The 296 is Ferrari's plug-in hybrid with a twin-turbo V6, which Ferrari called its first six-cylinder road car to carry the Prancing Horse badge (the Dinos of the 1960s and 1970s wore their own name), and the GTS is the open version. Pale blue against dark brick is a very good look.
The day the police shut the Gaien spot
Winter tells a different story. Our reel from that day, posted in February 2026 with the line "POV: Tokyo Police shut the car meet", opens on a road outside the avenue with a black-and-white Toyota Crown patrol car rolling towards us, red light bar on, followed by more. Our footage shows no racing and no arrests, just the patrol cars working their way along. By the last shot, the avenue holds taxis, a few parked sedans and a man walking down the middle of the empty lane.
One car we still caught was the smallest of the lot: a red Honda Beat, parked under the bare trees with its soft top up. Honda built the Beat from 1991 to 1996, a mid-engined two-seater squeezed into Japan's kei car rules with a 656 cc three-cylinder, and in a place full of V12s it got just as many phones pointed at it.
How to see it
Go early on a weekend, stay on the pavement, and be patient: some mornings you get a Countach, some mornings you get a Beat and a patrol car. Both count. In late autumn the ginkgos turn gold and the avenue fills with sightseers as well as spotters. For more of what Tokyo's streets throw at you, see our eleven frames of Tokyo, our Japan car spotting with a Countach and a Revuelto, and Nissan Skylines in Tokyo.
Photos and video: One Breath Pictures.
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