Troubled Oro Valley high school student Sean Boswell lives with his mother. They had been forced to relocate multiple times, due to Sean’s poor behavior, before settling in Arizona. After school one day, Sean gets into a confrontation with athlete Clay over the affections of Clay’s girlfriend, Cindy, who flirted with Sean.
They race their cars, a 1971 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, and a 2003 Dodge Viper. When Sean cuts through a structure and catches up to Clay, Clay, desperate to win, hits Sean’s car repeatedly until they reach a high-speed turn, which causes both cars to crash; Clay’s Viper hits a cement pipe, and Sean’s Monte Carlo rolls. While Sean wins the race, both cars are totaled, and they are arrested. Clay and Cindy’s wealthy families help them escape punishment, but because Sean is a recidivist from a poor background, he is sent to live in Japan with his father, a U.S. Navy officer stationed in Tokyo, in order to avoid juvenile detention or jail.
On arrival in Tokyo, Sean’s father fails to pick him up from the airport due to a time zone mix-up. On his first day in school, Sean befriends Twinkie, a military brat, who introduces him to the world of drift racing in Japan. After driving to an underground car show in Twinkie’s 2005 Volkswagen Touran, Sean has a confrontation with Takashi, known as the D.K. (Drift King), and who drives a 2003 Nissan 3100Z, over Sean talking to Takashi’s girlfriend, Neela, who is one of Sean’s classmates. Although barred from driving, Sean decides to race against Takashi, who has ties to the Yakuza, in a 2001 Nissan Silvia S15 Spec-S loaned by a racer named Han, but he loses his first race with Takashi due to his unfamiliarity with drifting.