InitialD - the reality

[El_Camino]

There is a lot and very interesting information in Wikipedia about the movies. Starting with the begining, the story, who is who and what drives, then also what ist drift, drift competitions, story, types, detailed setups, the champions through the years and finaly ending with the release dates for the episodes 19 and 20 (aprox. 15 Oct )and with some curious facts about drifting.
After the movie is released, the Akina road becomes too famous in the real life, so the police has to makes bumps in the begining and at the and of some turns, including the famous 5 hairpins, to stop the racers.

Reading about all this I become curious and wanted to see where is this place in Japan. Coudnt find anything in NASA and earth.google.com (most probably not enough jap customers for google yet?).
Afterwards I checked at Wikipedia about the mount Akina, which is called in the reallity Haruna and there was a very nice surprice! The links for the mount were not showing some landskapes and just beautyfull nature, but the Akina pass with the turns explained from a racing point of view (how they are, how they need to be passed, how crashed where) .
So this is the page (even babifished to arabian english).
There are also some brake traces to be seen

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=...en&ie=UTF8

The 5 hairpins (most probably this is what they pictured in the movie (the begining)):








And this is the map of the mt. Akina track



And this are the links, if somebody wants to visit the information at the Wikipedia pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drifting_%28motorsport%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_D#Background

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Haruna

[Jezza_hr]

This has been around for a while. You will find that Irohazaka is also quite popular and real as is myogi, Usui and shomaru. I will link up the website once I find it.

EDIT: Here ya go http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~eg9/gallery.htm

This still has to be my most favourite shot

[El_Camino]

This is really amazing picture!!!
I LOVE IT!

[Apolan]

aha! on the bottom hairpin, you can clearly see that there is a place to make the" leap" as demonstrated by that guy in sw20.

[El_Camino]

Babefished:

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=...uage_tools

[Mux213]

Search the forum, there is a post here somewhere, can't remember who made it, of one of our members that actually visited "akina" in Japan. Took some pictures there and did a mountain run in an EVO if I am not mistaken.

Most interesting fact in that whole post is that the hairpin turns now have speed bumps there, and that the gutter technique does actually work

[Jezza_hr]

The gutter is there at least. But to use it, you have to be an absolute nutcase.

[Ivan141]

Check it out;
http://www.aeu86.org/viewtopic.php?t=389&start=0

We should start bugging Simon about that video he promised us back then. Too bad he's out of the hachi world at the moment though.

[Apolan]

definitely! i wanna see it!

[firehawk]

A small bit of useless trivia follows;
'Haru' means 'spring' in japanese, whereas 'aki' means 'autumn'.


Here's a link to Google Maps, showing the road (number 33) down Mt. Haruna, starting from the lake on top of the mountain and to the city (gray area with road number 15 intersecting from 33);
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=haruna,+ja...6921&hl=en

I'll need to play around a bit more with Google Maps and find the other touges as well.