Hot, Testosterone-Fueled Car On Car Action!

Japan's love of motorized transportation is legendary, but the people of Oita Prefecture were starting to make me wonder if Speed Racer and Initial D were lying to me through their poorly animated teeth. Practical family MPVs, wagons and kei cars are legion while the mainstays of Japan's 90s muscle car boom rust on cinder blocks underneath dust covers. Adding to the confusion is the fact that denizens of Oita Prefecture don't seem to know there's a world-class race circuit, Autopolis, located within its bounds, albeit at the periphery.

But I do, and today, after three years of waiting for the stars to align I finally went and witnessed the Kyushu stage of Japan's Super GT series! Sure, a bike race would have been more up my alley, but beggars can't be choosers this late in the season, plus seeing anything that reminds me of how I'm not riding my Mille--my darling, my lover, the only one who understands me--is just pure torture.

I woke up at 8AM, downed my last bottle of "Real Gold" vitamin drink, ate the piece of Trandor cheese toast I'd been saving from the previous day's trip to Oita City and shot out of town heading south on highway 387. This is the same highway I took to Hosenji Onsen on my first Bad Idea Bike Ride, but Autopolis is much further down the road and a whole bunch of twists and turns away. If I weren't screwing around exploring the town of Oguni (utterly charming), stopping to ponder the soft serve ice cream shop down a one-lane road in the middle of nowhere (where business was inexplicably brisk at 9AM), or just plain taking the wrong road I would have made the trip in an hour, but I arrived around 10:30. Having the space in the car, and not wanting to slowly hoof it around the track like always, I brought my bike along. To say I was a head turner is an understatement--I mean, how many Americans on road bikes with red tires and red messenger bags do you see at Japanese circuits do you think there are?

A few of the Vitz Cup cars and one of the GT500 Autobacs NSXs moving considerably slower than track speed.

I arrived too late to see the Vitz Cup race (damnit!), but in plenty of time to see the warm-up and final race of some V6 cart series. I don't really know, it was the most boring race I've seen since I watched two cockroaches scurry across my floor and bet myself on who would make it to the fridge first--in the end they both got smooshed by my righteous heel. Waiting for the Super GT race I tooled around on the bike admiring the track, the track babes and watching some Chinese acrobats who were doing...what exactly...at a Japanese race track? Well, the dude could sure stack chairs, balance on top and pour tea real good like. But about the track, Autopolis is a much more serious circuit than I'd thought it before. It blends hairpins and sweepers really well near the middle section forcing drivers to show off their shifting and braking skills more than anything else, but the elevation changes also mean your machine better be up to snuff powerwise lest you get passed on the uphills.

Autopolis' front straight and pits. They really want to host an F1 race here. Then, one of the track's mid-section technical bits. This is where the drivers hit the gas and I go deaf.

The field for Super GT was broken up into two classes that would be running at the same time, GT300 and GT500--an idea that I absolutely love as it adds spice to have moving "obstacles" on the track--and was comprised of an incredibly diverse set of machines. There were several Fairlady Zs (known in The States as 350Z, or course), Honda NSXs, Lexus SC430s, but there was also a Celica, an MR2 Ford GT, Ferrari F430, two Lamborghini Murcielagos, two RX-7s, an Impreza Sti and a few other cars I couldn't figure out but resembled McLaren F1s. I've never actually seen one in real life though, so...

For you, Pat

What a race, what a race. Probably the most fun I've ever seen. My first observation is the Lexus SC430s are fucking fast in this GT tune! They dominated the top spots consistently throughout the 60 lap race and it was in fact an SC430 that won the race. My next observation is that the Japanese run a b-r-u-t-a-l race. Brutal! When the GT300 Celica got rear ended by two GT500 cars on a left hand sweeper and the three went spinning off the track jettisoning debris across the track did the pace car come out to allow crews time to clean the mess up? No. Did anyone ever clean it up? Nope. Did they even yellow flag the corner? Hell no! There were two accidents I saw after that that did necessitate a rescue car, but they kept the race running while the rescue car was on the track! And I mean on the track, as in, the rescue car was running with the field to get to the incident sites. Just another moving obstacle to avoid. I would be terrified had I been in that rescue wagon. God, what a cool race.

No flag for you!

Heading home I thought it would be the ideal cap to the ideal day if I were to stop off at my favoritest favorite onsen of all time, Kurokawa Onsen, which is on the way home from Autopolis (sort of). It was a good idea that I did, not only to avoid the race traffic heading home on much too narrow roads for the volume, but also to see that my favorite onsen has only gotten better in the past three years. Kurokawa is the closest to a real-life Japanese fairytale that any place in this country can be, achieving this feat by just staying quaint and offering a fine product with no frills. I'm not yet a good enough writer to articulate how the town makes me feel, you'll just have to experience it for yourself to understand.

Much to my delight, and adding another feather in the town's cap, Kurokawa has now started microbrewing its own beer...and it's good too! Dry like Asahi, but with a flavor not unlike Anchor Steam it was worth the $5.87 J-bucks I paid for it.

--Matt