Iroha-zaka (Mt. Nikko) (いろは坂)

Mountain road · Japan, Tochigi

Forty-eight hairpins, autumn leaves, a road built for tourists drifters claimed.

Iroha-zaka is a pair of one-way roads, Daini Iroha-zaka up, Daiichi Iroha-zaka down, connecting central Nikko to Lake Chuzenji higher in the mountains. Together they have 48 hairpins, one for each character in the old Japanese iroha syllabary. Autumn foliage turns the corners into one of the most-photographed touge runs in Japan.

Drift culture inherited the road sideways. The downhill route is one-way, downhill-only, with hairpins close enough that you cannot carry serious speed but you can absolutely carry serious angle if you want to. The result is grassroots drift footage that reads as touge cinema even at slow speeds. The leaves help.

Police presence on Iroha-zaka is heavy in season, the road is too well-known and too popular with tourists to allow night runs. The pilgrimage now is daytime, photo-only, respectful. The car you bring matters less than the colour of the leaves on the day you arrive. The corners have not changed.

Source: Raita Futo · CC BY 2.0