Greetings from J-Land everyone! As I write this in my hotel in Shinjuku, I’m multitasking by simultaneously uploading pictures, editing video, and updating my status on Twitter, Facebook and here on Mayday. I flew into Japan Sunday night, and contacted Alexi of NoriYaro.com fame to show me around while I am here in Japan. Alexi is no stranger to Japan, and is an avid drifter and car enthusiast originally from Australia. He drives a JZX chassis, and pretty damn good.

Don't mind the front bumper

So as I gave him a call that Sunday night at around 9 or 10pm, he tells me that if I wanted to go, I should be ready to be picked up by 5:30am. Damn. I hadn’t slept the night before in Houston, and I didn’t sleep a wink on the 14 hour flight to Narita Airport. I fell asleep around midnight and awoke at 3:30am, made sure I had all my camera gear charged and ready to go and walked outside.
Then it hit me.

It’s raining.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of rain, and I have a pretty good bag to keep my camera gear from getting wet, but I was thinking that the rain would put a hinder in my abilities to shoot video and snap pictures while at Nikko Circuit. I’d find a way no matter what.

A sweet red Zenki S14 Silvia

Holy hell, this is one nice ass old soarer!

The Nikko Circuit Paddock was full of cars. Alexi said that there were a good amount on this day for it being only a monday. I was stoked to see so many nice cars that were not only very visually appealing, but also hella functional as well. I saw so many cars that were either tucking rims, or had superflush wheel combos on all sorts of cars.

Sweet Jesus, this FC was rocking BN sports, wide fenders and aggressive wheels

Widebody is still in full effect in Japan, as this FD3S proves.

AE86’s, FD’s, FC’s, S13/S14/S15’s were of course there, but something I noticed was that there were a ton of 4-door drift cars being thrown into the mix. Chasers, Mark II’s, Cefiro’s, and Laurels were as common to see as Silvias.

We want 4 doors!

Yes. This Skyline powered Stagea is also a drift car.

But don’t get me wrong, I love R32’s, S14’s and S15’s just as much. And there were some great examples:

This two toned S15 had a matching color scheme with the Mark II next to it.

One wicked S15 with awesome stance. Not just for show!

Another nice Zenki S14

Something you don't see on drift tracks often: A Nissan Z32

Part one of a series of 3 is concentrated mainly on the cars in the paddock. I’ve taken more than 500 photos for the day, and even though it doesn’t have a MayDay watermark and it’s unedited, I think they turned out better than what I thought with all the rain. Holding a heavy ass DSLR with one hand, and an umbrella in the other is no easy task.

But I also managed to get some footage, so if you’re not busy and have about 14 minutes to burn, check out the video:

Nikko Circuit: Part One from David Do on Vimeo.

As always, the entire picture set can be found HERE.
Tomorrow I will post some action shots as well as the drift video footage I shot. Stay tuned!
–David–