judged by Keiichi Tsuchiya and was held at Tsukuba Circuit as the series' main venue. In 1997, he won the Chubu Ikaten which took place at Rally Kids INA (INA Circuit) along with his team "Kazama Juku" winning the team class, he also won the STCC event of that year. In 1998, he won the one-make S14 drift champion contest hosted by Manabu Orido and Video Option which took place at Sportsland Sugo's Kart course. In 2000, he won the 2nd Ikaten Superstar Drift Battle held at Ebisu Circuit's South course which was held in April. 26th, 2000. He became one of the first drivers to use an S15 for drifting but was heavily in debt until his patience paid off when he was sponsored by Tsuchiya to be the driver for Kei-Office, whom he also worked for as a mechanic. D1 Grand Prix From when he first started in the D1GP series at the end of 2000, he had moderate success, but when he teamed up with Gengo, things started to pay off. He ran his personal S15 until Kei-Office debuted a blue S15 at the Final Round in Nikko, which the car was being worked on throughout the 2001 season and was also continued to be used for the 2002 and 2003 season. In 2002, he managed to earn the runner-up spot at 2nd round in Ebisu Circuit against Nobuteru Taniguchi. Onwards, however, he was unable to get past through the qualifying runs which ended up with him being ranked 17th overall. In 2003, the Kei-Office team had debuted a new track-spec S15 at the 4th round in Fuji Speedway which wore the company's signature jade green, Prodrive GC-06D rims and a new 2003-spec original brand body kit (now under Rodextyle) as the previous kit was co-produced by Behrman/Wisesquare. He still had moderate success especially taking the runner-up spot once again at Round 5 in Ebisu. He was ranked 12th overall. In 2004, this was marked as a start to a successful season for him as he won his first event at the season opener in Irwindale, it was an important pinpoint since he's a veteran drifter within the Japanese drifting community. At the championship round finale, Kei-Office once again debuted another S15 which was previously the company's 2002 season car, with the main focuses of a stricter setup than the previous car by the use of Driftmaster