Tag Archives: touge
Happy Mountain Day from JNC
Happy Mountain Day from JNC! If you’ve never heard of Mountain Day, a national holiday in Japan, don’t feel bad. Over a third of actual Japanese people have no idea it exists either. To be fair, it’s a new holiday — so new, … Continue reading
GRAND TOURING: Mazda Hakone Turnpike and Izu Skyline
While living in Tokyo has many problems, finding a place to go for a drive is not one of them. There are countless skylines, touge, and turnpikes, all challenging and spectacular roads within a short distance of the capital. For this … Continue reading
GRAND TOURING: Driving across Japan in a JNC, Day 07
In the last installment of our cross-Japan trip, a life-long personal goal was achieved. I had driven from the northern Hokkaido on one end of Japan to southern Kyushu on the other. However, the journey was far from over. We and our … Continue reading
VIDEO: Drifting Hakone in 1992
Imagine a winding touge packed with Japanese drift machines — Silvias, RX-7s, Supras, Fairlady Zs and AE86s. So. Many. AE86s. Last year we showed a video proving that underground drifting was already reaching fever pitch by the late 80s. By 1992, Hakone Pass — one of … Continue reading
VIDEO: 157 of Japan’s best Touge roads, brought to you by the Toyota 86
Going strictly by land mass, Japan is about 10 percent smaller than California, and a full 70 percent of its terrain is mountains. That’s why the twisting passes that cut through the ridges known as touge provide Japan’s preferred method of hooning. When the Toyota … Continue reading
VIDEO: Cruising and drifting Hakone in 1989
Talk about time travel. What were you doing in 1989? In Japan, car enthusiasts were lining up at Hakone Nanamagari Touge like it was a playground slide. A notoriously twisty section of mountain road, it is part of the most famous of Japan’s touge, the birthplaces … Continue reading
QotW: What’s your dream touge build?
Touge. It’s the reason Japanese sport coupes adhere to the doctrine of lightweight, high-revving philosophy. 73 percent of Japan’s landmass is mountainous, and the touge roads are where a uniquely Japanese form of hoonage was born. So, if you live … Continue reading
ART CORNER: Fujimi’s Touge Series Box Illustrations
Long after earning driver’s licenses and pinkslips to our rides, some of us still find ourselves mired in plastic model cars. Perhaps it reflects the constraint suffered by many of us on budget, space, or sanity (of ourselves and/or family … Continue reading
Neo-86 jumpstarts Japan’s waning car culture
Even up until the mid-2000s Japan was swarming with sleek, souped up performance machines that would give any JDM nut seizures of joy. A stroll down any major street was like tracking a pre-race establishing shot from Tokyo Drift. The … Continue reading
Sliding Sunnys
The title says it all. Vids below the fold.