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GYARUTEN: Girl drifter-only Ikaten at Fuji Speedway, Part I

By in 27-05-2010 11:08 pm


OK, this is going to take a little bit of explaining.

Today, I went to Fuji Speedway for an Ikaten.　”Ikaten” is short for “ikasu hashiriya chiimu tengoku” or “Cool Streetracer Team Heaven”. They’re a regular part of Drift Tengoku videos, and the usual format is that they go to a certain part of Japan and invite a few of the local amateur teams to compete and see who is the best team and individual driver in the region.

This time though, it was an all-girl event. My friend Shino was invited along with Gon-chan and Tomo-chan, two other girl drifters from Tokyo. Their team was called “Forty Overs” because all three of the members are over forty years old.

If you look at the team board, there’s a joke in the name that comes from the character “婆”, which means “old lady”, but can also be pronounced “baa”. “４０お婆ーズ” in Japanese can be pronounced “forty overs” in English.

The theme of the group was “Showa yankee joshikousei“, or basically delinquent highschool girls from the 80s. These days, bad schoolgirls wear extremely short skirts, but the thing to do back then was to wear your skirt as long as possible.

The guys in the team did “cosplay” too, in “gakuran” male school uniforms and wigs. I had a particularly awesome red “Regent” pompadour to go with it. It would probably work pretty well for a cosplay of Sakuragi from the Slam Dunk manga too.

I’m guessing the expression on a lot of your faces right now looks a lot like the guy in the background.

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SPRING DRIFT MATSURI 2010: G1 Grand Prix

By in 07-05-2010 8:18 pm

It’s Drift Matsuri time again! Once again, unfortunately for you guys, I spent more time messing around behind the wheel than I did holding a camera.

I guess that makes these pictures all the more special.

This time around, the G1 Grand Prix event was held on the Friday rather than the end of the event on Sunday, so I left for Fukushima on Thursday afternoon. First though, it was into the local Super Autobacs for some foaming window cleaner and a spare exhaust gasket.

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ITO AUTO SOUKOUKAI: Where I’d rather be

By in 11-01-2010 6:26 pm

I would have liked to drive at the Ito Auto event at Nikko Circuit today, but the closest I came to that was seeing it on the Nikko Circuit webcam. I’ll have to make the February event then. Look at all those Toyotas!

As for my car’s problem, as far as I can figure out, it seems that the third coil pack is dead. On a VVT-i 1JZ, that means that two plugs stop firing, so it sounds more like a ported rotary now than a 1J. New parts are on the way, as are some hotter platinum plugs, which I’ll probably use to drive the car around in low-speed traffic to prevent the carbon fouling problem I’ve been having recently. I’ll save the more expensive cold NGK iridium race plugs for the track.

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