Tag Archive: Michiko Yasue

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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