So after a long trip back from a long weekend at Ebisu I had two days to rest up and prepare the car for a day at Meihan the following Wednesday. This is just a small number of pics from the day, be sure to check out the entire set. I would be heading out with my local Kameoka guys so I was really looking forward to the day. It was going to be a hot day so we decided to head out around 4:30am so we could get there a tad early and snag a few covered spaces. This meant waiting at the gate for about 45mins:

When we got in we were able to snag 2 covered spaces, something that was awesome around noon when it was near 31 degrees with near 90% humidty. Masa finally got his 86 fixed and it was awesome driving with him on track again:

Ryuta is his C33 Laurel brough a few tires….

It turned out to be a great day, and there were plenty of nice cars around. This was a big practive event for a lot of Kansai guys to get ready for the Kansai Allstar’s event that would be a few days later (more on that in a few posts). Here is the Zeik crew:

Meihan + wall + 3rd gear = be prepared:

And when do you hit…fix it quick. I dunno about this, but yes the dude ran on it like this:

This car from Mie was killing it all day. HKS 3071 & HKS sequential was cool to watch.

A local Kyoto guy’s C33 Laurel. Big top mount SR20 spinning deep deep 15″ SSR’s all the time.

The day for me was fun, and uneventful. Plenty of tire killing and no crashes or mecanical problems at all. Again, be sure to check the full set!

So after the walks around Kyoto it was time to do some more driving…this time down to Osaka to load the car up and send it up to Fukushima for Summer Matsuri. I had to raise the front of the car up to get ‘er on the trailer:

7 total cars made the trek up for the event. After loading up we jumped into two vans and started the long 9 hour drive up to Ebisu.

We got to the track around 10:30 on Friday night and there were already a good amount of cars lined up waiting to get in, so we threw the vans in line and went for a sleep. Sadly the entire weekend was wet, but at least this made for some low cost drifting. I had planned of using 3 sets of new rubber but didn’t kill even 1 pair.

Thats me dropping in on Minami (South) the main D1 course. I’ve wanted to hit this track for over 10 years but it just wasnt the same as I thought. I blame the rain. I was fun no doutbt though, and South in the rain is famous for killing cars so I just took it easy here. I did spend most of my time here however, out of the 6 courses available for use the entire weekend.

It’s a toss up between South, North, and East as my favorite courses. South may sneak past the others as #1 but this is just becuase…well it IS Ebisu. I will be back to Ebisu no doubt, I need to hit it up in the dry. It will either be epic, or I will kill my car.

The car got way dirty, but I was able to avoid any wall or tire barrier taps (many close calls though for sure!) and had zero mechanical trouble all weekend. I was amazed. It was also cool to meet a lot of cool people, here Alexi’s R32 and my red thing are chilling at West course.

I brought my camera and managed to get some footage, nothing special but at least proves I was there AND drove lol. No 3rd into the 1st corner at Minami..I know its lame..but rain made for no confidence there. North’s back sweeper in 3rd was damn fun, coming up over the crest past the pits flat out in 3rd. East course was huge, with a long straight into the 1st turn. I would so some 3rd gear maji into it using some side and staying in 3rd through the rest of the couse. This couse is awesome, but I’d need 50-100 more hp (yes, even in the rain) to really make this course fun. Anyways, on with the video:

Over all it was a great experience, and I shall be back for some tire killing in the dry. Maybe Fall Matsuri?? And again big big thanks for Keith for snapping the pics. Check them all out at his site!

Just some in-car from the recent morning at Suzuka Twin. Am I the only one that feels like this video is playing at 1.5x speed or something??

As you can tell I had the track all to myself. That was good and bad; I could mess up all I wanted and not have to worry about other cars, but at the same time one car driving alone is a big yawn. Still not where I want to be with rhd, as you can tell in the video I like to use the e-brake at random useless times for some reason, my hands are all sloppy, and I should be in 3rd more but the 2-3 upshift mid-drift still messes me up so tend not to use 3rd when I should….

BM Hai 2000 Kansai

Track looks so scary! Not even paved out to the wall into the 1st corner.

Wednesday and Thrusday we spent the days roaming Kyoto and seeing the normal tourist spots that I know of. Nijo Castle, Kinkakuji, Kiyomizu-dera, Sanjusangendo, Fushimi Inari, Myoshin-ji, and of couse a stop at Kyoto Station for some food, some sushi along Kamo-gawa, and a few delish Gin & Tonics at my favorite bar.

For ever more shots be sure to mosey on over to Keith’s site for his posts on both Wednesday and Thursday.

After the morning at Suzuka Twin we grabbed a quick lunch at a 7-11 or something and headed back to Kyoto. We decided to run through a few parts shops and such that proved to be a bust. Plus the heat and traffic didn’t help our spirits. After getting back to my place it was some quick showers and then we headed out to some bbq with my Kameoka peeps. After some delish meats it was time for more drivng. To the mountains we went:

We had about 5 cars running at the same time, good times. Suffice to say after all this in one day we slept well that night. Keith’s original post here.

The past two weeks have been fun, busy, sleepy, fun, and really sleepy. Keith came into town on the 3rd decently late, and the next morning we woke up early to head out for a morning session at Suzuka Twin.

A few days later we would head to Ebisu. Before the haul up though I wanted to give the car a good shakedown and make sure it didn’t blow up or somthing. With all the new parts and newly raised boost level the car felt nice and quick. I had been driving the car stock powered (aside from the exhuast) for almost a year so I suppose any jump in power would have felt good.

The track is just shy of a 2 hour drive from Kyoto, but its a quick 30-45min drive from Nagoya, so I gave Travis a call to see if he wanted to come toss his newly fixed and repainted R32 around.  Luckly he showed up, otherwise I would have been the only car on track all morning.

Just about any weekday you can show up at Suzuka Twin and drive either or morning 3 hour session or an afternoon 4 hour session. I opted for the morning since it was going to be a hot day and so we could do something things in the afterroon. The track is nice and open with plently of runoff and a nice mix of high 3rd and middle 2nd sections. Kansai area D1 level drivers often use this track to test and tune new setups due to the arrive and drive nature of the couse. 3 hours sounds like nothing, but it was more than enough to kill a set of tires and get a ton of driving in. I had no real problems with the car so I felt good about hauling it to Ebisu. I got some incar footage so I will try to get than up asap. As you can tell Keith was on vacation here with me, so be sure to check his blog for more updates!

Some shots of my car that I didn’t take. Thanks to those who did!

Thanks Alexi, Dino and Laurence!

And this is the only picture I have

Proper update after I get some sleep.