Touge Without the Police: Japan's Legal Mountain Courses (2026)

Japan has exactly one place where you can legally drift something that is genuinely a mountain road, and it is not sold by the day. Gunma Cycle Sports Center, called 群サイ (Gunsai) in the scene, is a 6 km one-way road course cut into a hillside, and hiring the full course on a normal-season weekday cost ¥440,000 when we read its rate card on 13 September 2026. If what you want is the feel of a pass at track-day money, the answer is different and much cheaper: Ebisu Circuit’s Touge course is 1,200 m, was built to imitate a mountain pass, and sits inside the ¥8,500 Course 4 drift pass.

Almost every foreign drifter arrives with the same picture in their head: a narrow pass at night, guardrails, tail lights. That picture is history rather than a plan, and our history of touge covers how the technique moved from the passes onto circuits in the 1980s and 90s. What nobody writes in English is the practical follow-up question. If the mountain road is off the table, which closed courses actually give you elevation, blind corners and a road-like layout, and what do they cost? Here is the honest list.

Ebisu’s Touge course: the only one you can buy a ticket to

Ebisu Circuit (Fukushima prefecture) has ten courses, and one of them is called Touge because that is what it was built to be. It runs 1,200 m and imitates a Japanese mountain pass road. Crucially for a visitor, you do not have to hire it or know anybody. It is bundled into the standard drift pass.

Prices checked on the official pages on 26 August 2026. Ebisu is closed on Wednesdays. The full picture of the other nine courses, access from Tokyo and the rental operators who work there is in our Ebisu Circuit guide.

This is the option we would point almost every visitor at first. It is the cheapest, it is the only one with English entry documents, and a Course 4 pass gets you the Touge course plus four other layouts in the same day.

Gunsai: the 6 km mountain road, and why you cannot just book it

Gunma Cycle Sports Center is the real thing. A one-way road course cut into a mountain, 6 km long, split into A, B and C sections, with a 1.2 km short course alongside. Nothing else in Japan is laid out like it.

The catch is in how the facility operates. In normal running the road course is 通常自転車のみのご利用, bicycles only. Cars appear on it only when somebody hires it, which means there is no individual entry, no free-run day and no public calendar entry to find. Every car day at Gunsai is a shop or club event on a hired course.

Rates read on 13 September 2026. Weekend and holiday rates run roughly half again higher, winter (December to February) is cheaper, and groups of 20 or more get group rates. The facility endorses drifting directly for two areas, describing the temporary car park and the 2021 multipurpose square as ジムカーナやドリフトの走行会に最適です, ideal for gymkhana and drift track days. No spectator price is published anywhere, so admission on an organiser day is that organiser’s call.

Split across 20 cars, the full course works out at ¥22,000 a head, which is why the shops that run it fill their entry lists. The problem for a visitor is not the money. It is that these days are announced in Japanese on an organiser’s own social media, often weeks out, and the entry conversation is a Japanese phone call or DM.

Mountain settings that are not mountain roads

Two more venues get called touge-like in English write-ups. Both are worth your time, and neither is a road course, so go in knowing what you are buying.

Okuibuki Motor Park (Shiga) is four asphalt ski-resort car parks totalling 34,500 m², high in the mountains and used by Formula Drift Japan. It reads like a mountain venue because it is one, but you are running on linked car parks rather than a pass. A weekday individual run was ¥15,000 per person on 14 September 2026, accepted from three days out, capped near ten people, and only offered on days nobody has hired the lot. The season is April to November, 8:00 to 17:00, helmets compulsory. It is private land, so cars without number plates are welcome. Detail is in our Okuibuki guide.

Bihoku Highland Circuit (Okayama) has the word in its name and sits up in the hills, and it is the single most accessible venue in the country for a visitor: the official FAQ states that no licence of any kind is required to run, just be 18 or over. Drift free-run was ¥5,000 on the A course and ¥6,500 on the B course, gate ¥500, read on 26 August 2026. The trade-off is that the circuit takes bookings by phone and fax only. Our Bihoku guide has the way around that.

Central Circuit (Hyogo) is a full 2.8 km road course rather than a drift pad, which is the closest thing to road-course drifting you can spectate easily, but drift running there is organiser-run event days rather than open free-run.

So what is stopping you driving the actual pass?

Two laws, and both of them reach foreign visitors.

Drifting on a public road falls under article 68 of the Road Traffic Act, joint dangerous conduct, which carries up to 2 years’ imprisonment or a ¥500,000 fine, plus 25 demerit points. That points total revokes the licence of a driver with no prior record. Separately, since 21 July 2026, article 2 item 6 of the dangerous driving law treats deliberately sliding or lifting the tyres as dangerous driving in its own right, with up to 15 years if you injure somebody.

Being a tourist does not insulate you. A prefectural public safety commission can ban you from driving on an International Driving Permit for up to 5 years, and 3 to 10 years where the conduct amounts to a dangerous-driving offence. The full breakdown is in is drifting legal in Japan?.

The comparison, in one table

Every venue above is pinned in the track directory, and the dates that are already confirmed sit in our event and track calendar.

If you take one thing from this list, make it the gap between rows one and two. The mountain road exists and it is legal, but it is a ¥440,000 booking rather than a ticket. The thing most visitors actually want, a road-shaped course with elevation and blind corners that you can turn up and drive, costs ¥8,500 and has done for years.