Nihonkai Maze Circuit (Niigata): No Licence, Weekdays Only (2026)

Yes, you can drift at Nihonkai Maze Circuit (Niigata), and it asks less of a visitor than almost any other circuit in Japan: no club licence, no reservation, ¥9,500 for a three-hour session plus ¥1,500 at the gate, paid when you arrive. The catch is which day you arrive on. The three-hour four-wheel session only mixes drift with grip from Monday to Friday, and the Saturday and Sunday sessions are grip. All of the figures here were checked on the circuit’s own pages and on its October 2026 schedule on 23 September 2026.

Maze is a 1.5 km road course cut into the hillside above the Sea of Japan, half an hour west of Niigata City, and it has run since long before anyone called this sport drifting. It is not a skid pad. You get kerbs, elevation and a proper pit lane, which is why the D1 NEXT Niigata Series raced both of its 2026 rounds here.

Can you really turn up at Maze without a licence or a booking?

You can, and the circuit says it in plainer language than most Japanese venues manage. Its own page carries two lines that between them remove the two barriers that stop visitors everywhere else: 「MAZECIRCUITは、特別なライセンスがなくても、走行することが可能です」, meaning you can run here without holding a special circuit licence, and 「予約は必要ありません」, meaning no reservation is required.

The day the circuit describes is four steps long. Check the monthly schedule for a four-wheel or drift day. Arrive after the gates open at 08:00. Pay the entry fee at the gate. Sign on at the office and start running, with a briefing on the spot if it is your first time. The session itself is 09:00 to 12:00 in the morning or 13:00 to 16:00 in the afternoon, three hours of free running, with timing on the grip side only.

The MAZE licence exists, but it is an economics decision rather than a gate. It costs ¥33,000 for the first year, including ¥3,000 of sports safety insurance, and comes with twenty ¥1,000 running vouchers. It expires at the end of March whenever you buy it, so for a two-week trip it makes no sense.

How much does a day at Nihonkai Maze Circuit cost?

Everything below is from the circuit’s own fee page and the October 2026 schedule, read on 23 September 2026. Cash, at the gate and at the office.

Two of those rows need translating. 感謝DAY, “thanks day”, is a discount week the circuit runs once a month across the whole schedule; in October 2026 it covered the 25th to the 31st, and it takes ¥1,500 off a visitor’s three-hour session. 体験走行, the trial run, is a 25-minute introduction for people who have never been on a circuit at all, booked by telephone, with the gate fee and the briefing included. Four-wheel drivers who turn up without a helmet or gloves are lent them free. You can only do it once; after that you are on the normal session.

Why is drift at Maze a weekday thing?

Because of a single line of legend printed on every monthly schedule: 「4輪＝4輪グリップ(平日はドリフト・グリップ混走)」. Four wheels means four-wheel grip, and on weekdays drift and grip run mixed. Read the October 2026 sheet against that legend and the pattern is unmistakable: Monday to Friday the four-wheel slots are marked 4輪（ドリ・グリ）, while 11, 17, 18, 25 and 31 October, every Saturday and Sunday, are marked 4輪（グリップ）.

So a weekend drifter has exactly one route in, and it is the narrow one. The drift-only slots at 08:00–09:00 and 12:00–13:00 run on any sport-running day, weekend included, at ¥5,500 for a visitor. They last 25 minutes and they need a telephone booking on 0256-85-2201. That is a long way to travel for 25 minutes of track time.

How do you get to Maze Circuit without a car?

Better than you would expect, on the right day. The circuit sits at 610 Mase, Nishikan Ward, Niigata City, and West Kanko Bus runs its Maze line from Maki Station on the JR Echigo Line, 15.9 km via Iwamuro to the Mase terminus, with fares on the line running from ¥160 to ¥620.

On the timetable in force since 1 April 2026, the 07:32 from Maki gets you to Mase at 08:15, which is fifteen minutes after the gates open and forty-five before the session starts. Coming back, the 13:25 catches you after a morning session and the 17:13 after an afternoon one, with a 14:52 in between. Those are all fixed-timetable services.

Weekends are a different service entirely. Only three buses run each way, and every one of them is a 事前予約便, a reservation-only departure that will not run at all unless somebody has booked it. The booking line is a separate number, 090-7151-3056, it answers 09:00 to 17:00 on weekdays only and not on public holidays, and it closes the day before you travel, with no same-day bookings. A Monday seat has to be requested by the preceding Friday. On top of that, the first weekend bus does not reach Mase until 10:33, an hour and a half into a session that is grip anyway.

Add the circuit’s own standing instruction to ring 0256-85-2201 in Japanese before you set off, and a visitor who wants a weekend at Maze is facing two Japanese-language phone calls, both of which shut the day before travel, with no English page on either website to fall back on.

If you would rather not gamble on the bus at all, Minshuku Takenoya, a family-run guest house a minute’s walk from the gate, does ¥4,000 room-only at a rate reserved for circuit users, rising to ¥7,000 with two meals. July and August are priced separately.

What does Maze ask of your car?

Less than most, and one thing is conspicuously absent. The four-wheel common safety regulations cover a two-litre catch tank, taped battery terminals, 4 mm acrylic if you replace side or rear glass, roll bar mounting, and fuel tank rules. On exhausts the whole requirement is one line: if you change the muffler you must fit a silencer. There is no decibel figure anywhere in the document, so unlike the 110 dB ceiling at Owara Circuit in Toyama, a limit at Maze is not officially stated. Treat that as untested rather than as permission.

No cars are hired at Maze, by the circuit or by anyone else on site, so you arrive in something of your own or in a car an operator brings for you.

What else happens at Maze during the year?

Enough that the calendar is worth checking before you fix a date, because an event day is a day you cannot run. The circuit hosts endurance races on radial tyres and for kei cars, a Honda one-make bike series, shop track days, and the competition that put it on the map for overseas fans: both rounds of the D1 NEXT Niigata Series on 18 and 19 July 2026, which we covered in our Rd.1 report and Rd.2 report.

Maze is also one half of a two-venue trip, because Owara Circuit in Toyama is the only other Japan Sea venue that sells drift running to the public. Both, and the three prefectures with nothing at all, are in our Hokuriku and Niigata guide; the raw fee and access data sits in the track directory.