My dad put a cup of water in my car during tofu deliveries to a hill resort. He said it was to ensure the tofu didn’t get damaged in transit. But he was secretly developing my downhill racing technique. Apparently if I didn’t spill the water, it meant that my cornering technique was ‘smooth’.
Also the kiddie version of ‘wax on wax off’ is ‘hang your jacket on the hook, take your jacket off the hook’.
Initial D!
Also, that technique has no real-world application. The father told him to try and make the water spin in the cup instead of splashing back and forth. But that’s not possible just from driving a vehicle, no matter how you drift corners.
I lived in Japan back when that anime TV show was releasing, and I can tell you, it’s pure fantasy. Although it’s much closer to real Japanese street racing than that awful Tokyo Drift film. That film was basically American street racing with Japanese actors. Actual Japanese street racers are science, math, and physics nerds, pushing the boundaries of their cars for the fun of it. Not hardened gangsters or Yakuza wannabes, decking their cars out with neon lights and massive spoilers and body kits. Hollywood invented their own concept of drift racing for that film.
You lived in Japan but you seem to ignore the existence of the bosozoku when you say that people don’t deck their cars (motorcycles too) out with ridiculous body kits?
Serious drift racers don’t do that. Yes, there is a subculture in Japan who loves to deck our their vehicles with body kits and LED lighting and heavy sounds systems. But mostly for show, not for racing.
I was comparing Tokyo Drift’s idea of Japanese drift racing with reality. That film is just Hollywood trying to make drifting look sexy and sleek. In reality, it’s just a bunch of nerds who find ways to shave every little ounce off their vehicles to improve results in their calculations and charts. Body kits, neon-colored lights, and beefy sound systems are just added weight.
I mean, throughout the course of the Fast & the Furious film franchise, the main characters go from illegal street racing punks to international spies, saving the world from global threats. So you really shouldn’t be looking to those films for any sense of reality anyway.
Not exactly what you want but I heard about people in the military practising things and they learn. “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
By doing that it makes you quicker. Sometimes when I’m late and start rushing I end up forgetting things or knocking things over or dropping. So I take a breath and say slow is fast. Also my career history is big on “right first time” doing something twice is a huge waste.
Also I remember Adam Savage said he got close to death (or was getting close to being rescued from death) then he told himself “Calm people live. Tense people die.” and he managed to free himself.
Taking a moment might not just save you time or money it might save your life.
It was far from a life and death situation, as it was a highly controlled activity.
But it was meant to mimic a life and death situation for practice: Anyone who travel by helicopter in the North Sea are required to go through this course which includes an emergency water landing drill. It involves sitting inside this thing that is reasonably close to one of the common helicopter models used in the north sea. Same seats, same belts, and similar windows.
This “simlator” hangs from a crane over a pool. So that you can practice escaping from a ditched helicopter. “Brace brace brace!” dunk
This is done while wearing a survival suit that has a rebreather. Each passenger has a dedicated scuba frogman to make sure you don’t panic and drown.First dunk emulates a successful water landing. Helicopter remains floating for a while, but then goes under. Release window, unclamp, and swim out.
It gradually increases in fuckery, to the poin where it’s emulating a helicopter that goes under right away and flips around as it does.
I’m fairly light weight, so this survival suit gives me a lot of buoyancy, and this collar-like thing around my neck tended to catch on the window as I was going through. In the beginning, this was not a problem, but it became a pretty big one on the last test.
The disorientation from being flipped made it hard to compensate for the extra buoyancy, so I got stuck, upside down in the water. I immediately knew what happened, but I remained calm, moved back a little bit. With one hand to keep track of the window, I used my other hand to pretty much pack and squeeze collar as close to my neck as possible, preventing it from catching. There was no panic, but there was a slight worry that the frogman hadn’t intervened. Thanks to the rebreather I could stay pretty calm and focus on what needed to be done to get through the window.
When I reached the surface the frogman explained that he saw that I was having some problems, but decided to let me continue, as he saw that I was calm and reasonably in control. In a real scenario such as this, panic would’ve killed me.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is survivable.
