Meihan Sportsland (名阪スポーツランド)

Circuit · Japan, Nara

Kansai's grassroots cathedral, and the home of the "Meihan style".

A short circuit on the Mie–Nara prefectural border, an hour and a half east of Osaka. Meihan is the Kansai region's grassroots drift church, short loops, walls close, schedule tight, prices low. It is where you go when you want to learn drift technique the way the Japanese practice it: every weekend, on tape, with the same instructors watching the same corners for fifteen years.

For drift specifically Meihan matters because the "Meihan style" exists as a real thing, a Kansai-flavoured technique pattern around long-clutch-kick initiations, deliberate scandinavian flicks, and proximity-to-the-wall judgment that comes from running this layout repeatedly. Naoto Suenaga is the contemporary figurehead; the whole D1 Lights pipeline runs through this gate.

Western pros who visit Japan and bypass Meihan are missing the actual school. Ebisu is the campus; Meihan is the seminar room. The cars run light, the wheels run small, the lessons compound.