It’s out! Remember the all-girl ikaten I went to a little while ago?
Here’s part one and part two of my coverage of the day in case you missed it.
I posted the preview of the latest Drift Tengoku DVD last week, and it came out today!
I’m not going to post the video itself, so here’s some screenshots.
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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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Once again, it seems like every other day I’m at Nikko Circuit. Before the Tochigi Baka Matsuri though, it was a Shino Kouba workshop practice day.
After heavily crashing her last AE86, Shino has moved all the suspension bits and pieces into this new black Levin while the old engine gets sent off to be refreshed a bit. It might look nice, but it’s pretty rough underneath. The pink pinstriping, done by female painter Kana-chan, helps a bit though!
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My friend Shino from Shino Kouba garage intended to spend the last couple of days practicing at Ebisu Circuit’s Higashi Course.
Unfortunately, this happened on the fourth lap of the day. Goto-san had suggested that she might want to try a fourth-gear entry on the main straight, something she’s never tried before. Sometimes not trying hard enough with an initiation can be as bad as trying too hard, according to Shino.
While the crash happened at about 140km/h from a 160km/h entry, Shino got away with just a sore neck and shoulders, and she already has another slightly rusty shell ready for all the unbroken parts to be installed in. I hope she’s not making a habit of crashing hachis…
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A couple of weeks ago, Shino had mentioned that she had been asked to come along to Mobara Circuit with her car, because an American film crew were coming, and wanted to film her drifting.
Turns out it was for the second season of I Survived a Japanese Game Show!
For anyone not familiar with the show (link to Youtube segments here) it’s an American reality show along the lines of The Apprentice or Survivor, based around competing in team-based, Japanese-TV-style challenges.
The team that wins each challenge gets to do something cultural and fun, like visiting the Tokyo fish markets. The losing team has to do something difficult, yet still cultural, like working as rickshaw drivers or labouring in a rice field.
This week’s winners won a ride in a drift car.
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This flat-black Levin used to belong to Satoshi “Wampaku” Nakatani from Garage LFW, until the engine blew and Shino from Shino Kouba garage bought it cheap and stuck a standard 4AGE in it to have some fun with.
Unfortunately though, when you’re driving a car you don’t really care about crashing, you sometimes do.
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