Clubs are a big thing in Japanese universities, and especially at Waseda. To sum things up very briefly, and to avoid a huge rant, Japan is very much about belonging to a group. You are judged by what Uni you attend, what faculty you're in or what company you're working for. When introducing yourself, you say, for example: "早稲田大学の国際教養学部の三年のグリーリダニエルです" - "I'm Daniel Grilli, a third-year at the School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda University". Crucially, though, the word order in Japanese is in reverse, and your name always comes last.

Within the Universities themselves it is almost mandatory to join a club or their more casual equivalent, a circle. As I mentioned before, Waseda is full of them - rumour has it that there are more than 300 tennis circles alone! (Although the number of those that actually play tennis as opposed to having nomikai all the time is pretty low)

It all kicks off with a campus-wide fair at the beginning of the Spring semester where each club vies for your attention by handing out fliers. There's literally a club for anything, from music to sports (cricket!) to mountain climbing to sailing. I was very tempted to join a few, particularly the acapella circle, which counts the famous Gospellers as part of it's alumni, until I spied two guys in racing suits on a chance visit to the campus. Now this was what I was talking about!!

The Waseda University Automobile Club (早稲田大学自動車部 or WUAC) is no normal club. It's been around since the dawn of the Japanese automobile industry in the 30s and is part of the university proper. That means they have a garage on campus (a miracle considering we're in space-constricted Shinjuku) and recieve money every year.

They participate in a variety of events, from Gymkanas to Rally-style time attacks to the incredibly awesome six-hour, off-road, kei-car endurance race. The cars they use are quite varied: an older Civic with an Integra Type-R engine is used for their circuit work, whereas a tiny but potent Toyota Starlet GT Turbo gets called in for off-road duty. And did I mention that they can do almost anything to the car in their garage?

My experience with the club began at a welcome BBQ one Monday night. It was interesting to see the premises and hear from the members as to the activities - I was really excited. But the most exciting part was to come. (Parents please skip to next paragraph).

One guy who had befriended me, a third year named Shinichiro, asked me if I wanted to go for a drive with him after the BBQ was over. "The only thing is though", he said, "we'll be getting back at around 4 - 5 am". I was doubtful at first, but as he had a lovely white Skyline R33 GTS-T parked outside, I wasn't about to let an opportunity like this pass me by. We ended up driving for a couple of hours to a (relatively) quiet bit of road under a highway somewhere south of Haneda Airport, where we met up with members from the Keio University club, our arch-rival. It was all friendly tonight though, and we hung around and chatted while people took turns to practice their drifting/ handbreak-turning skills while there were no trucks moving past. I think that's all I shall mention of that night...

Needless to say I joined the club as soon as possible. I haven't been to another late-night outing since, but that's not because of a lack of opportunities - rather, I need my sleep!

Joining the club itself is, as I said on Facebook, rather similar to joining the military. I need to pass a health check and cardiogram, pass a test to reach the first rank and always be respectful to my superiors (for those of you that don't know, Japanese has various forms depending on whether you are speaking casually to friends or to a superior in a company etc. I really dislike using the polite, honorific form because it's wordy and, I feel, creates divisions between people of different ranks).

We start off each club session with a gathering where everyone stands in file according to rank with the leader at the head. Next is steering practice. Each person picks up a wheel and practices left and right turns whilst holding the wheel up in the air and trying to keep it as centred as possible. It's a good idea as you want that sort of thing to be instinctual when you're trying to do a handbreak-turn at speed!

What follows then largely depends on what events are approaching. There's always car maintenance/ modifications to do, as well as study for the test (car readiness checklist). Things usually wrap up at around 10pm, which is no problem for me as I live only five minutes away.

Anyway, this post is getting rather long, so I'll get to the part with the photos in it!

Last week the club held the 'New-Members' Gymkhana' in a carpark in the mountains four hours or so north of Tokyo. Us newly inducted members were given an old EK Civic (with EK plates in photo) and were either taught to drive if we didn't know how or taught to handbreak turn if we did. A handbreak turn isn't easy, especially when someone's trying to explain the  theory of applying centrifugal forces in Japanese! I think I kind of got the hang of it in the end, though.

Other things we could do were to ride alongside the full members in their cars as they practiced on a gymkhana course. Let me tell you that even a 660cc Suzuki Alto feels fast in a small carpark!