Cruising to Tsukuba Circuit
One of the things I couldn’t believe was the number of abandoned houses on the way up the road. The further we headed north, the fewer young people we saw, and it seemed like a lot of the smaller towns look deserted,
Anyone out working the land was in their 60s- or 70s. It was unbelievable. I’m aware of Japan’s massive over 60s population, but you see it once you head out into rural Japan.
This was a mad scene, a bunch of American machines out in the Japanese countryside.
Mostly deserted small towns on our way out to Tsukuba.
Anyone, we seen looked way too old to be doing hard labour for a good hour. It was nothing but older adults walking, driving or working the land. I wonder what will happen to all these areas in another twenty years.
We made it to the Tsukuba Circuit, but we didn’t get as lucky as we had at Fuji. The track was closed. We played the fools and drove in, hoping we could get under the bridge and in for a look around as the gates were open. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to be the case. The security guard was baffled as to why we wanted to see the track!
After a dodgy series of google translations, it wasn’t happening, so we headed outside to look at some of the old shops down the street from the main entrance.
Check the leaf growing through the wheel on this K11.
To my surprise, we spotted a parked collection of k11s, and one of them was a car that inspired me to build mine. What are the chances? It was part of a K11 race team called Non-dan, who did many track days at Tsukuba. I wasn’t expecting to see this parked outside.
Non-Dan’s website is still active, but it hasn’t been updated in a long time; I followed this k11 on Minkara and the Non-Dan crew. They race all sorts of k11’s/ k12’s around Tsukuba; it was unexpected to see them sitting up here.
Same with this sad looking GT Turbo. Hopefully, they see the track again someday.
Too much cool stuff lurking in this old shop.
We wanted to go back here and try to chat with some of the drivers, but we didn’t want to trespass.
I bet these units are filled with epic cars.
The weeds are slowly consuming this little Suzuki.
Reuben looking slightly demented from driving.
After a good 30 minutes of drooling on the March, we decided to head for Utsunomiya, a town we had a weird experience with before. It’s a very non-touristy city.
For some reason, not too many places come up on tourist-friendly sites like booking.com. It took us a good hour or two to find a place to stay, and as we walked around the city for the night having a few beers, a lot of businesses wouldn’t let us in to drink, pretty much the same vibe we got from the city back in 2016.
After wrecking a few local Japanese peoples heads with Momo tyres, we decided to head to bed.
The next night would be a wild one.