If you have never visited Japan, it's probably tough to understand how embarrassing the 2009 Tokyo motor show is. In a country fueled by respect and honor, this show certainly looks like a joke when compared to the last shindig in 2007. The sun is now rising in Tokyo and I'm betting the vast majority of journalists are heading to the airport to get home a day early instead of going back to the Messe for the second preview day.

There is no massive reveal this year that forced people to wait hours for a glimpse of a really hot new car like there was in 2007 with the GT-R. Instead, one floor display is a bunch of drawings of cars that seem to have been done by shildren. Enthusiasts aren't seeing more affordable production cars that they've been teased with for months like the STI and Evo were last time. Instead, we're back to the traditional funky concepts and futuristic powertrains. While it should have been a highlight of the show, Lexus looks silly with its LF-A showing up in white paint. Perhaps the car drives as well as anything else on the market, but that color on a Lexus or Toyota product just makes the appliance jokes too easy. Not what you should be going for with a $400,000 supercar.

Of course the Tokyo show is a victim of the credit crunch, economic downturn, and whatever else you want to use to describe the last year's series of events. In addition to that, it's difficult to have an exciting show in a country that hardly imports enough foreign cars each year to worry about. There's really no reason for the American, German, Korean, or even Chinese automakers to bother paying for display space, shipping over cars, and setting up a press conference. No matter how hard the companies try or how great their products are, the Japanese will continue to drive cars that come from Japanese automakers. The only way around that is a shift in governmental agenda.