Doridore (Drift & Dressup) was the highlight of our Japan trip and I was so damn excited to finally see some drifting. The "Dressup" basically means "Fashion Car" so all the cars at Doridore were literally show cars, many of them were seen the day before at Wekfest Japan which blew my mind.
Okuibuki is a Ski Resort that gets used as a motorsport complex outside of Winter, The main parking area was turned into a drift course with a bunch of well-placed cones.
We finally arrived at Okuibuki after what felt like a 5 hour drive (it was only two and a half-ish hours, I'm just a big sook).
On the plus side we had the pleasure of following this gorgeous JZX100 Chaser up an endless string of windy roads, These roads really made me wish we had something a little more fun than a Toyota Vitz..
The initial set up of the event was pretty cool, You had the parking area gone drift course up the top of a massive hill and to get to the spectator parking you had to drive up the actual "touge course" they were going to be using later in the day after they closed off the main entry. As we arrive and are driving up the touge course we see a TONNE of photographers on the side of the road with their bright orange vests on and our first thought was "Holy shit, are we on the track?! Are we about to get cleaned up by some crazy drift car coming down the hill at over 100km/h?!?!" But we later discovered the layout of the event and realised ~everyone~ had come in the same way and the photographers we spotted were just there to capture all the cool cars rolling into the parking area (what a relief).
In conclusion, that was basically the most terrifying thing that happened on our Japan trip.
As we pulled into our designated parking space I grabbed all my camera gear and started looking around at all the amazing cars just parked away from it all. Cresta's, Chasers, AE86's, GT-R's and so on filled the car park around our little Vitz.
This IS350 came dragging up the car park and leaving small fragments of chassis rails on it's way passed.
Here's a few quick photos I shot while walking towards the track.
After spending a good thirty minutes just looking at all the cars we were going to be seeing drifting today, we finally headed down to the drift course where cars were already performing. The sheer environment at Okuibuki was breathtaking with the massive mountain ranges clearly visible, it made for some awesome photo opportunities.
There was a big concrete barrier that separated the crowd from the cars but that didn't stop a swarm of Japanese teens smacking their hands on the wall trying to wind up the drivers to come in for a wall-tap. Most of them were armed with orange traffic controllers' wands.
Apologies if some of these are too blurry for your liking, I was trying out some new settings hoping to get a bit more motion blur in my photos, Some of them turned out horrendous while others weren't too bad.. (these are the ones that weren't too bad lol)
I always like to try and have obstacles in my photos, something that's sort of "in the way" but doesn't take the main focus away from the car;
The timing was either perfect or this passenger was genuinely asleep.. Or maybe passed out?
Again, with the "obstacles", Sorry mate lol.
I'm going to have to really thin-out the amount of photos i'm posting of each car otherwise we'll be here for hours. From here on out the rest of the photos will just be "highlights".
It's always just a little bit weird seeing a WRX sideways..
I went "exploring" to see if I could find any cool angles but being elevated didn't really do me any favors.
We could hear cars off in the distance so we assumed cars were now running the touge course so we went to have a look. It was a shame because I wasn't official media so I couldn't really get down into the trees. We went and had another walk through the pit area before heading down the hill.
Some of the drivers seemed to get a little bored while waiting for their run on the touge section so why not just cut some hoops while you wait.
This was the only photo I was able to get down at the top/start of the touge section due to the massive crowd and the fact they were filming for their doridore video (there was a chaser with a cameraman in the boot leading all the cars)
Oh well, Back up to the main area we go.
Bye bye police.
Here's @keiya_sawa's car that I spotted the day before in Nagoya at their workshop completely by accident haha, Photos from that can be seen here and here
As the day came to an end, they decided to get everyone out onto the track for a last couple of laps, there was probably about 40-50 cars out on the course at the same time which was complete mayhem and every photographers worst nightmare lol.
After the drifting had finished for the day I decided to go have a look at the car show portion of the event, shortly after this we headed back to our hotel.
As the sun started to set over Okuibuki Ski Resort, it was time for us to hit the road, I couldn't help but photograph some of the cool cars out in the spectator parking area.
I hope I get to see you again soon too, Okuibuki.
Thanks for reading x