ROUTE ONE

All you need for a roadtrip is a car, a destination and an excuse. Over to our man in Japan to stretch that brief to its limit...

- OLLIE KEW

A long time ago, a friend told me there's a place nestled on the eastern side of Tokyo bay called Hota. "Surely," they smirked, "somewhere in Japan there's a Hatcha. Then all you'd need is a Japanese hot hatch, and you'd have a quintessential TopGear mag story." A peek backstage for you there. Alfa Stelvio over Italy's Stelvio Pass? Storm chasing in a Huracán? Where do we get our ideas?

Of course, we don't just lob darts at a map and set off on an arbitrary quest for a tortured pun and, oh, would you look at that, a quick delve suggests there's a Hatchobori district in southern Tokyo. Close enough.

I didn't fly halfway across the world just for this. Honda invited TG to its headquarters to check on its EV progress. Much earnest bowing and four billion PowerPoint slides later, I've been introduced to slimmer batteries, ultra efficient motor windings and low wattage heaters. But no actual cars. Or pictures of cars, or even disguised renderings of cars, at night, in a dark room.

With a day to kill in Tokyo before a night flight homeward and an aching brain, I'm hungry for something tangible, not numbers, graphs and promises. This is the chance. Just need a Japanese hot hatch. Lucky my host makes a doozy and they buy my pleas to borrow one for an epic roadtrip of derring do hook, line and sinker.

Early doors, I'm in an underground car park beneath a Honda office block across the road from Akasaka Palace. There's a small problem: the Japanese market Civic Type R - identical to one you'd buy in Britain in every way - refuses to speak English. There's no option to set any of its readouts into a language I can remotely understand.