An Early Rise For D1 At Meihan - Juiceboxforyou

We had come up with an ambitious plan, hit D1 early in the morning and then drive five hours to Sports land Yamanashi and potentially meet up with Alexi from Noriyaro and our mate Andrew from Ireland. We heard about a night drift event at Yamanashi and were told not to miss it.

I love seeing these totally stock X100s in the wild.

We packed our stuff and said goodbye to our penthouse suite in Nara, and hit the road to grab some breakfast.

The anticipation as we drove through the main gates at Meihan was something else.

Meihan Sportsland is one of those tracks. You’ve watched it a million times in videos over the years with Naoki and everyone else in between, but it looks so different in real life, a lot smaller really and a lot sketchier looking.

When you drive through the main gates, you roll right past the track. I got incredibly excited by the Meihan sports land sign, and right there on the other side of the hill was the track layout, another spot we have all been eager to see for as long we could remember. This dream had finally become a reality.

We quickly parked the van down at the car park below. It was just the practice for the later on and tomorrow main event, so we managed to get in for free. Regardless the driving was pretty epic to watch, watching drivers set themselves up for quite a challenging selection of corners.

It was fantastic to see Nomukens son driving and learning the ropes. Nomuken was spotting for him on the main wall. You could see each driver getting more comfortable with every run; it’s a very intimidating track. You have to fling the car at the wall and hope you get the line right to carry your speed down and around the bottom bend. It’s fascinating to watch.

The man himself!

After we sat for a few hours watching a dream show of professional driving at Meihan, it was tough to get up and leave. Sitting in the van for a 6-hour drive to another drift track didn’t sound exciting.

Reuben didn’t want to go anywhere, and I didn’t blame him. We were at D1 in Meihan. Why would we want to go anywhere else, were we just being greedy? Did we need two drift events on the same day?

After a bit of hesitation, we decided to jump in the van and began the long journey.