Mazda Turnpike in Hakone, Japan

Like much of Japan, Hakone is very mountainous with lakes caught between the ranges.

The neat thing about Japan, is you will always find a car scene in the mountians if you look hard enough. The car-enthusiast are alwasy very kind and welcoming.

This specfic mountian range just so happens to be home to the famous Mazada Turnpike. It is basically a down and back race track. You pay a toll to go in and you can drive as fast as you want through the mountain passes, there is no speed limit. I think the cost was 700 yen ($7). I just caught a very clean Porsche 911 coming off as we got there.

There was an eatery there as well, but we didn’t go in. I was too excited to get the skyline on the turnpike.

I had just completed my JUN stage I build on the GTR and was excited to finally have a chance to open her up./p>

Since it was the middle of the day on a work week, there wasn’t a lot of cars just hanging out on the parking lot. However, this BMW’s owner was pretty cool and I chatted him up as much as possible in Japanese.

Here is a clip of our first run down the mountain, going downhill with myself, my son, and my father in law really put the 24 year old Skyline brakes to the test. It was instantly apparent that they needed an upgrade as my next project.