It's great. I've been to a fair few races and this is one of or the best one to go to. Extremely safe and respectful, easy to navigate (though a long wait in the rain for buses to the train station last night), tons of visibility, it's beautiful with the mountains, and it's one of the cheaper ones to attend!
Some yakisoba, a beer, and a fantastic ice cream. All very cheap, beer is ยฅ500, like $3 US, and food is similarly inexpensive
It's a great race. Japan is great in general. I went a long time ago with very limited Japanese and had a wonderful time. Now with N5/N4 level Japanese it's even better!
I got a ticket through the Suzuka website. I'm American, so I had to stay up pretty late to do so, and there was some website fuckery, but once that was settled they were very reasonably priced and good seats!
Oh shit. Fellow American here, so if you have any tips, feel free. By the way, feel free to DM me if you ever want a practice partner. I've passed N1, but not living in Japan anymore means that I rather don't have many chances to use my Japanese.
Heck yeah! I might hit you up on that, and on what life in Japan was like! We've thought about moving a few times; my work is techy-enough to be able to probably get work here
I should clarifyโ the tickets sold out that night, so if you didn't get one from the venue within a few hours, you were forced to buy from a reseller. I've had good luck with a reseller once before but it's definitely cheaper from the source
Yeah I ended up having to pay out the ear to go to last year's USGP, but since I'm only like 15 minutes from the track anyway, at least I didn't have to suck up flights, hotels, etc. But I've never seen an F1 race that didn't sell out within like an hour from the primary source. I guess I should plan on 2025...
Really want to get to Zandvoort, Suzuka, and Canada next year.
Oh cool! Yeah we've been to the USGP twice. It was such an expensive and logistical nightmare in 2021 that I was like "surely we can do better for this price" so we went to Mexico and I was near Silverstone for work during it last year. I've been to Japan and China for the GP a long time ago and was like let's do Japan, the place is the best!
My tl;Dr of F1 races is to book a refundable hotel as soon as you see the schedule, then get flights if you manage to score F1 tickets. For Suzuka, I'd recommend staying in Nagoya (or nearer the circuit if you can), or near Chubu airport if you can manage the high speed boat logistics. I'm not sure how they work other than we were too late for them, but it seems a very nice route if you can pull it off.
Canada is great, Montreal itself is lovely too. Cool that you're in austin-ish; it's also a great city.