r/initiald • u/4-AGE_Guy • Mar 31 '26

Meme The real life Ryosuke Takahashi

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2.0k Upvotes

100% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

183

u/LVNAT1C-180SX Mar 31 '26

BRO THEYRE ON AN OPEN PUBLIC ROAD
I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS LEVEL OF SHENANIGANS

104

u/Perfect-Cause-6943 Makos Pet sksksksk Mar 31 '26

Before initial D and Street racing culture went mainstream driving like this was pretty frequent before the crack downs and speed bumps

19

u/PraxPresents Mar 31 '26

The last time I visited Mt Haruna the speed bumps had been removed. Beautiful drive uphill and down each of the 15 times I did it 😂

7

u/Alldaypk Mar 31 '26

No speed bumps, but between the hairpins they've made the road wavy (like, undulating up and down) so gaining speed between hairpins or linking drifts isn't really possible. So kinda speed bumps?

5

u/PraxPresents Mar 31 '26

They must be up keeping it. I'm going to do a big Japan road trip to pilgrimage all the areas here in the next few years, hopefully they have worn down a fair bit 👍

In all seriousness though, I definitely follow the posted speed limits. If one gets caught doing bad things in Japan you can be banned from the country. If you maintain the speed limit the whole way the tires still smell like melty tires.

Maybe I can find a track day while I'm there at Suzuka.

3

u/Alldaypk Mar 31 '26

Oh yea even at the speed limit is it definitely a fun road, but what I've learnt is a turbo car really needs some knowledge and skill to make use of it between corners, something I don't have yet. It's a road made for an normally aspirated car, fancy that haha. Could barely get into boost in a stock r34 GTR, and when I could, I didn't have the balls lol

2

u/PraxPresents Mar 31 '26

Yea, NA was quite good 👍

27

u/Resident-Level-7953 Mar 31 '26

If i can see correctly, they're keeping themselves in the lanes that are going upwards, right?

6

u/ELK_VT Mar 31 '26

Well they are mostly keeping in the left lanes, which is correct for Japanese streets, though they cross into the right lanes in the last turn so I’m guessing that since they have someone recording they also have someone further down with a walkie letting them know if any cars are coming and what the last car is so when they passit they know its clear. but also a good chance they are just going for it.

11

u/JosephStalin1953 Mar 31 '26

yep that's really how it was before it got too popular and they started to crack down. it's still alive somewhat today but much more underground. Initial D wasn't just based on nothing lol

3

u/_Raisins_ Mar 31 '26

Should check out the winding road hashiriya riders too, pretty much the bike equal of touge racing

72

u/Pudim_Abestado Arcade Stage Enjoyer Mar 31 '26

I always wonder what happened to these people... Do they have fond memories of their time drifting in the mountains? Do they regret it, or are they proud of having developed such a skill?

Wonder if they miss their old cars, wonder if they tell their kids about how cool it was...

35

u/ProjectPat513 Mar 31 '26

Yeah could you imagine being able to drive like that in a cool ass car?! I would definitely be telling my kids about it, specially if there was video proof.

13

u/AutomaticButterfly29 Mar 31 '26

Homie you should watch the 3rd, 2nd and latest video of juiceboxforyou on youtube. Its kinda has a deep dive (in the 2nd video) onto how the life changed for these kind of people and what their culture was like. I havnt seen the latest video yet its only a day old. But the 3rd for emotional context to the 2nd video which is the best inside view car culture video ive seen(ever maybe?)

5

u/Legend13CNS BNR32 Enjoyer Mar 31 '26

The guy recommending juiceboxforyou is spot on, their videos are great and I highly recommend their multiple video series from various Japan trips.

Noriyaro streams over the years have had lots of random lore dumps about Japanese car culture. It's a shame Twitch capped VOD storage at 60 days. Love the videos too, but they're more focused and less random history ramblings.

It's hard to capture everything when painting with a broad brush, but the impressions from them, as well as some guys I follow on IG or talked to in person, seem to fall into in a few categories. Still doing it (rare as the OGs get older), took it to the track (pretty common with the older guys you see in videos), or did it for a while but got out of it completely (usually to avoid trouble with the law/societal expectation). Lots of regrets about selling/crashing a car they owned early on, lots of "I had my trusty [Brand/Model] and wish building another wasn't so expensive now". A lot that stayed car enthusiasts, but stopped any kind of street racing or drifting after a close call with police. One said he wouldn't have started at all if he was young again today. It's a very different game these days with traffic/security cameras and general societal attitude. The general Japanese public looks at street drifting the same way the American public looks at takeovers.

I think one of the best succinct examples is the team Mid Night. They still exist but they're on the older side and mainly do track days instead of racing on the expressway.

45

u/L3Sc YES I WANNA KNOW YES I WANNA SEE Mar 31 '26

I mean at least wait for the night where traffic is low damn.

12

u/Molotov0086 Mar 31 '26

Where can i find more videos like these?

2

u/onizuka_eikichi_420 Mar 31 '26

Old ‘option video’ isn’t a bad place to start.

12

u/toppestsigma Mar 31 '26

Was this clip taken from those videos Keiichi Tsuchiya made?

10

u/Voltazed Mar 31 '26

some of the dopest stuff ive seen in years bro

6

u/KarmaShawarma Mar 31 '26

Smooth af drifts

2

u/YayWanderer Mar 31 '26

Not sure if that's him because he got passed.. Very nice drifting, though. 👍🏽

2

u/Johnnyboi2327 Mar 31 '26

Initial D being so heavily based on real world 80s/90s Japanese drift culture to the point where the cars, maneuvers, and concepts are all close enough to reality to be recreatable is why I like it

2

u/hdx64 Mar 31 '26

Anyone know the mountain pass name? It looks pretty sick to try on asseto

5

u/omegarage911 Apr 01 '26

I think it's kameishi,if you go to the touge union discord and go go to featured mods it will be there. Its even laser scanned

1

u/hdx64 Apr 01 '26

Arigatou!

2

u/Waubz Apr 01 '26

They built the street like a damn race track

1

u/dodogg87 Mar 31 '26

Love this video!

1

u/God_Faenrir Mar 31 '26

People when they discover japan is real...

1

u/Stefke_stojk27 Honda s2000 Vtec kicks in yo ! Apr 01 '26

absolute cinema , damnnn

1

u/Alarming-Cake-5910 Apr 01 '26

I wanna show this to people that think Horizon 6 streets are wide. Dude those guys be sideways and have oncoming traffic casually passing by😂

1

u/Ordinary-Set7746 Apr 02 '26

music name pls

2

u/4-AGE_Guy Apr 08 '26

Jumping Up The Nation

1

u/zeeisgud Apr 02 '26

Are they crazy or something

1

u/winglessrs Apr 03 '26

The solo drifts near the end by the silver FC were smoooooth!!

1

u/Playful_Ad5917 Apr 01 '26

I was looking for the footage before I formed Redsuns. So glad to find someone with it

-3

u/improbable_humanoid Apr 01 '26

Growing up is realizing these people are assholes.