HERO CONTRIBUTOR

AARON MAI

Howdy! It is very cool to be this month’s Hero Contributor. My NZPC journey began 147 issues ago in 2009, while I was based in Japan. I was asked to do a monthly column, and that pushed me to explore the Japanese automotive scene and travel around Japan chasing cool people and cars to document. Some of you may remember my ramblings and adventures through ‘Tuning Japanese’, which was a total blast to produce. In many ways the pressure to have something photographed and written about every month was the real catalyst behind getting the chance to experience all the amazing cars, workshops, and iconic places spread all over Japan. It allowed me to gain lifelong friends such as Nakai-san, Miurasan, and Kato-san, to name a few.

The real icing on the cake, though, was the opportunities that shooting for NZPC opened up for me. Going behind the (at that time) closed doors of the Nissan DNA Museum, and to the Super GT, Mazda headquarters, countless workshops, and famous circuits produced some real ‘pinch me’ moments.

One of those places features in this issue, and I am sure many of you are all too familiar with it. It is hands down my favourite place in Japan to shoot at, and it has left me with some absolutely cracking memories. Ebisu Circuit — and in particular the South course, aka ‘Minami’— is what many consider to be the most famous drifting location on earth. As we farewell an icon of the drifting world in this issue, I look back at some of my favourite memories and experiences of Minami. It was a lot of fun heading back down memory lane at the hallowed ground of Ebisu during one of the best eras of drifting that Japan has seen.