Adventures in Japan - The Daily Drifter S15

The time has finally come for me to start writing about my Japan adventures. I have so many stories to tell from the Far East, some applicable to CT and others not so much… Of course I’ll be sticking with the former!

This takes place during the final days of my ‘Drifting Adventure to Ebisu’. I was driving past School Course in my S14 and happened to come across this sweet S15 drifting, it was the only car out on the track so I decided to take a closer look.

I patiently waited until the owner drove back into the pits to cool his car down, then went in. The first thing you notice is, the entire car is mismatched in colour and body panels! It’s also street registered, it’s his daily!

So we have,: mismatched wheels, mismatched fenders, mismatched bumpers, mismatched hood, roof rack (take a guess what for? A hint, it isn’t for picnic baskets), and a spoiler.
If this isn’t drift spec I don’t know what is!

Now that I’ve got that out of the way I can say exactly what happened once I approached the owner.

Now the main problem with trying to speak to anyone in a foreign country (without knowing the language) is that you have no way of communicating!

This rule does not apply here.

As soon as I walked up to him, he pointed at my S14, I nodded. I then pointed at his S15, and he nodded (insert step brothers ‘did we just become best friends gif’).

We then had a (really limited) conversation about our cars which ranged from: inside? Yes, and drift? Yes.

To tell you I wasn’t surprised by what I found inside would be a lie, a really big lie. He had completely modified the interior of his S15 to the way he wanted. Starting off with a full bucket seat (with cutouts to look through his windows), harness for whenever he goes streeto (I cannot confirm nor deny that he participates in this, would be cool to watch, if he did. Or didn’t). Leather rear seats, TV and (big ass) speaker, drift button, aftermarket steering wheel with BOSS, and what I like to call a french maid shift knob with all the frills (see what I did there).

The passenger doesn’t get left out, they get screens too (this guy loves screens, damn)! They also get to play with the animals under the right monitor! He really loved the fact that I took such an interest in his car, which is actually understandable as in Japan these cars are really common, however I’ve only seen one in the UK, and it was stock.

He then gestured to the seat and my mouth hit the floor (check out that steering wheel)!

The first thing I noticed were the tyre marks on the floor (sometimes we find it hard to stop drifting, don’t judge us) and the fact that the track closed at 16:30, the time was 15:30. Then I noticed the gauges and the cool cluster that it was encased in, which actually followed the lines of the dashboard.

I think the way he has modified his car really says a lot about the scene in Japan - just do what you want to your car and don’t care about what anyone else thinks! One of the many reason why I love Japan!

At this point I climbed out of the car made a handbrake motion and pointed towards the track (when drifters come together, everything will end with a drift). He obliged, grabbed his helmet and I ran towards my car giggling like a Japanese school girl in an anime when Senpai notices you (I mean, I couldn’t not make this reference)!

We had a good session, we were twin drifting (not close enough to tandem and definitely not battle drifting), got some pretty sweet shots (just like the one you see above)! We were both really consistent with our drifts and only got close to the wall a few times. School Course kills the most cars during the Matsuri’s because of the wall, and the various dips which you see around the apex’s on corners (this is definitely a track that will punish you for hitting the apex). Super cool guy and it’s a shame that he didn’t have Facebook, hopefully i can meet him and his super cool S15 one day!

I have so much footage to go through from my first trip, second trip, and my third trip will be happening soon (April - May, Spring Matsuri)!

I’ll be doing more additions to the ‘Adventures in Japan’ series whenever I get a chance to!
Don’t forget to find out what the Drift Matsuri’s are all about and how you can come with me!

Part II is up! Adventures in Japan - The Salaryman’s S15