Mt. Hakone (Hakone Turnpike) (箱根ターンパイク)

Mountain road · Japan, Kanagawa

Toll road for car magazines. The most-filmed pass in Japan.

A 13.8 km toll road climbing out of the Hakone hot-spring belt south-west of Tokyo. Hakone Turnpike has been the location for almost every Japanese car magazine's long-form video and instrumented test for forty years. Best Motoring, Car Graphic, Hot-Version, pick a publication, you have probably seen it.

For drift specifically Hakone matters as the showcase road. It is wide, well-surfaced, photogenic, and operated as a private road, which means film crews can close it for shoots in a way you cannot do on Akagi or Haruna. The result is that almost every "pro driver in a road car" sequence Japanese media has produced since the 1980s used this asphalt.

The road itself is a fast, flowing climb with a couple of memorable corners. It is not a touge in the underground sense; it is the formal stage where car media puts its content. The cars in the films are the cars you would never see at Daikoku, manufacturer demos, prototype variants, factory race cars on parade laps.

Source: PekePON · CC BY-SA 4.0