What's a touge?

The touge means "mountain" or "hill". When we first came out with our Best Motoring International videos in 2001 we had discussion whether we should translate the word to mountain or rather go with the Japanese word "touge". We thought the English language can use another Japanese word besides banzai and sushi. Since then we've stuck to using the word touge because it not only means mountain but represents the kind of hills that the Japanese race on. At first people were saying, "oh, man I love your tooj showdown". We kept at it and now it is pretty commonly used at least in the import racing community.
Initial D made touge racing known but it is still an underground activity. All of our Touge Showdown segments are shot on a closed circuit. We like to keep it on the tracks and do no support street racing.