Drifting in Chugoku (2026): Hiroshima & Okayama Without a Car

You fly into Hiroshima or Okayama, you have a rail pass and no car, and you want a day sideways. Chugoku looks promising on a map — five prefectures, several circuits, a drift history going back to the early D1 years. Then you start reading and the picture changes fast: the best-known circuit near Hiroshima bans drifting outright, the international circuit sells no drift product, and the one place that genuinely wants your money will not accept a booking in writing.

Every fee, rule and timetable below was read off the official pages on 25 August 2026.

Can you actually run there? Start with this table

Five venues, and the honest answer differs at each one. “Soukoukai” below means 走行会 — a run day a shop or club has rented the venue for and sells entries to, rather than a slot you buy from the circuit.

Shimane and Tottori add nothing to that list. Searching on 25 August 2026 we found no circuit in either prefecture publishing four-wheel drift running on an official page, so treat the northern half of the region as somewhere you drive through, not somewhere you drive at.

Bihoku Highland Circuit: the one that works

Bihoku sits in the hills at Toyonaga Sabushi, Niimi, about fifteen minutes by car from Hokubo IC. It runs two surfaces: the A course, 710 m long and 9–11 m wide, and the B course at 1,100 m. Free running is ¥5,000 on A and ¥6,500 on B, falling to ¥4,000 and ¥5,500 for January and February. Admission is ¥500 for anyone of high-school age and up. A second driver sharing your car pays ¥2,000, a third ¥1,000 — which is how three friends split one hire car into an affordable day.

Then the FAQ says something no other circuit in this article says. Asked whether a licence is required, Bihoku answers that no licence is needed at all — not a circuit licence, and not even a road menkyo (driving licence), provided you are 18 or over for a car. Cars without number plates are accepted; people arrive on trailers. Hours are 08:30–16:00 on summer weekdays and 08:00–16:00 at weekends, with the gate opening thirty minutes before running starts, and the circuit closes exactly one day a year: New Year’s Day. Our Bihoku Highland guide goes deeper on the layout.

The catch is the front door. Bihoku’s FAQ answers the question “can I book by web or email?” with a flat no: telephone and FAX only, on 0867-74-2918, and the site is Japanese throughout. Private hire closes three days out for the A course on a weekday and a week out at weekends.

Getting to the Bihoku gate for ¥300

The circuit’s own access page gives you a driving route and nothing else. Dig into Niimi City’s public-transport pages, though, and a route appears that the circuit never mentions: the Niimi-nanbu noriai takushii (乗合タクシー — a pre-booked shared taxi that collects you from a door and drops you at a listed point). Its user guide names Bihoku Highland Circuit in the list of designated drop-off points, alongside Ikura Station on the JR Hakubi Line.

The fare is ¥300 per person per ride, IC cards accepted. It runs Monday to Friday, 08:30 to 16:00, with reception closing at 15:30, and it does not run on public holidays, between 13 and 15 August, or between 29 December and 3 January. You can fix a time up to a month ahead. Bookings go by telephone to the Niimi taxi cooperative on 0867-72-2114, or through the city’s web reservation page — which, like every other page in this chain, is in Japanese only.

The Hiroshima trap: TS Takata bans drifting

If you are based in Hiroshima city, every search points you at TS Takata Circuit, up in the hills at Takamiya, Akitakata. It is a lovely circuit and remarkably cheap — ¥7,000 plus tax for a full day of free running, ¥4,000 for a half day, admission free, and helmets, racing gloves and a tyre gauge lent free of charge. No licence is required beyond your road licence.

You still cannot drift there. The published usage rules say drift running is prohibited and that a driver who does it deliberately will have their day stopped; the private-hire rules repeat it as “drifting is prohibited in all circumstances”. The circuit’s own history page explains why — drifting was permitted for a handful of days after it opened in 2002, and the noise agreement with the neighbours ended that permanently. The exhaust limit is 96 dB at 5,000 rpm, and straight-through exhausts are refused at the gate.

Nakayama, Okayama International and Hadashi Tengoku

Nakayama Circuit in Wake is the region’s second real answer, and the one that rewards planning. The circuit itself runs a Grip (G) & Drift (D) day, splitting entrants into a grip group and a drift group rather than mixing them: ¥12,000 for a full day per car, ¥10,000 from 13:00, ¥7,000 if you hold the circuit licence, plus ¥2,000 if you want the transponder that prints your lap times. Four dates are on the calendar as of 25 August 2026 — Monday 21 and Wednesday 23 September, Monday 12 October and Tuesday 3 November, all 9:00 to 16:30. Every one is a Japanese public holiday.

The circuit licence is a discount, not a gate. It costs ¥36,000 to join and is issued over the counter against a driving licence, two licence-sized photographs and a hanko — the carved personal seal that stands in for a signature in Japan, which a visitor simply does not have. You do not need it: the ¥12,000 rate is the general rate, and the circuit’s own run-day announcement says in as many words that no licence is required and that entry is taken on the day. There is no advance booking and no entry form to fill in.

That cuts both ways. Nothing about the day is written down in advance — the circuit publishes no regulations page and no eligibility rules for its own run days, which means nothing on the site says whether an overseas licence or an International Driving Permit is accepted, and nothing offers a rental car or a ride-along. You bring a car. Because none of it is written down, the honest move is to confirm your date and your licence before you fly — the office answers on 0869-93-2333 and at [email protected], in Japanese, 09:00 to 17:00, seven days a week. Note also that the site only answers on www.nakayama-circuit.com; the bare domain returns an error page, which is how several directory listings for this circuit look broken.

Access is published as a driving route only (Sanyo Expressway, Wake IC, turn right immediately). Wake’s town bus runs weekdays only at ¥200 a ride and none of its fourteen published routes names the circuit, so budget a taxi from JR Wake Station. August 2026, for the record, really was grip-only: all eight run days that month were labelled グリップ走行会（ドリフト無）. The drift days are seasonal, so read the calendar month by month rather than assuming.

Okayama International Circuit in Mimasaka is a full-scale GP circuit and sells no drift running. Its licence-free entry point, Weekday Powers, is a grip run day: no licence, plated cars, booking by telephone only on 0868-74-3311, and the kit list includes a hanko, your driving licence and a copy of your health insurance card. The fee is not published — the page says the course and the price vary by date and to check each one. Come as a spectator instead: Formula Drift Japan’s Rd.6 runs here on 3–4 October 2026, with the FDJ2 round on 2–3 October. From Okayama Station, take the Uno Bus towards Yunogo Onsen or Hayashino Station, get off at Fukumoto after about an hour, then a taxi of roughly 20 minutes.

Hadashi Tengoku Circuit in Shunan, Yamaguchi, is far more alive than its web presence suggests. It ran its own はだし天国杯 Round 2 on 23 August 2026 and posted the numbers itself — 66 cars entered, 285 people through the gate. The 17th running of the 山口いち決定戦 (“Yamaguchi number-one decider”) is set for 18 October 2026, and D1’s own site lists D1 NEXT West Rd.2 there on Sunday 6 December 2026. The same series opened its 2026 season at Bihoku on 9 August, so those two venues effectively carry drift in this region between them.

What it no longer has is a website. The old address lived on Maho no i-Land, a free homepage service whose homepage function closed on 31 March 2020 — the archived copy of the circuit’s page was last edited in 2013 — so every English directory pointing you there has been pointing at a corpse for years. What exists today is an Instagram account, @hadashitengoku, and a landline: 0833-91-3789.

That splits the venue neatly in two for a visitor. As a spectator it is the easiest day out in the region: the circuit’s own posts put general admission at ¥500 for its events, and 18 October is a Sunday. As a driver you cannot price it or book it from overseas at all. No running fee is published anywhere current — the last published fee card is that 2013 archive, so treat any figure you find online as historical — there is no booking form, no email address and no English. The only route in is a phone call in Japanese.

Do not treat the December D1 round as your way onto the track either. D1 NEXT West’s own regulations ask you to download the entry form, photograph it and send it to an entry-only LINE account, hold a valid D1 licence or sit the provisional licence course on the day for ¥2,200, and bring ¥20,000 in cash to the desk; acceptance comes back by postcard. Entries open two months before the event and close ten days out, which puts the window for 6 December at roughly 6 October to 26 November 2026.

Getting there is its own problem. NAVITIME puts the nearest stations at Takamizu, 36 minutes on foot, and Yonekawa at 43, with the drive from Kumage IC on the Sanyo Expressway at 21 minutes — and visitors describe the final climb off Route 2 as a narrow, steep mountain road. Plan on a taxi, and on someone making the call.

Two ways to pay for a Chugoku drift day

The self-serve floor: about ¥6,100. Bihoku A-course free running at ¥5,000, ¥500 admission, and ¥300 each way on the shared taxi from Ikura. You bring or hire a car and tyres, which is the part that is hard from overseas.

The packaged ceiling: from ¥350,000. k-dori, a Kobe-based English-speaking operator, runs prepped drift cars at Bihoku on weekdays: a C33 Laurel at ¥350,000, an S13 Silvia at ¥380,000, a 1JZ-powered SIL80 at ¥420,000, each for the 08:30–16:00 day with tyres, fuel, transport and circuit entry all included. Up to three people can share one car for ¥50,000 more, so an S13 split three ways is ¥430,000 for the group. A refundable damage deposit of ¥300,000 or A$3,000 is due at least a week before. Two conditions to note today: they state they do not operate during summer, and as of 25 August 2026 they were taking bookings from late September onwards only.

Chugoku is not the region to improvise in. It is the region where one circuit says yes to everyone and four say no in four different ways, so the research is the trip. If you are still choosing a region, our Kansai guide covers five venues in a tighter circle, and the first-timer’s guide to entering a Japanese track day explains the paperwork you will meet at any gate. Check dates against the event and track calendar before you book anything.