25 February 2025, 08:26 AM
After achieving my first desire, I found myself living in a drift hunters foreign country, namely in Gunma, Japan. Unexpectedly, the rural setting in which I had been sent to work as an English instructor turned out to be an essential component in realizing the remainder of my goals and aspirations. Through a combination of luck and perseverance, I was able to locate a drift meet in the first-person version of Initial D. On the other hand, would the drifters provide me access to their realm so that I might realize one of my other desired outcomes? The drifters that night opened up to me, asked me to hang around. Over the course of a few weeks, I found that I got invited to more and more nights out on the touge. After a several meets had passed, I brought up the fact that I wanted to make a documentary to bring worldwide awareness to their scene. Surprisingly, the guys I talked to were really enthusiastic about the idea and were gracious enough to let me capture footage for my documentary freely. Thus, for the past several months, I have been slowly breaking into the underground touge drifting scene in Gunma, Japan which is very literally the anime Initial D come to life. I had become a drift hunter, keeping an eye out for tell-tale signs of drifting, searching for new contacts and approaching drifters to be included in my documentary. It’s been an incredible experience so far. The documentary, which I have titled Drift Hunter, continues to take shape every time I go out to film. Through Drift Hunter, I want to tell the story of the real-life counterpart to Initial D, and show people just where fact meets fiction. I want to convey the same visceral awe I feel when I’m out in the mountain, filming the drifters slide by at ludicrous speeds, inches from my camera.