Bicycles in Japan

Mar 21 2009 00:35 | 12 Comments

Living in Japan one of the things you’ll quickly notice is how important it is to have a bike. Before I came to Japan, I haven’t rode on a bike in years. And even back when I did ride them it was just out of fun. In Japan literally everyone has a bike. Typically the person, rather then driving his car to work, just jumps on the bike in the morning, rides a minute or two to the local train/subway station and from there within 10-20 minutes can get anywhere he needs to go as opposed to standing in traffic in a car and then when he or she finally gets to their destination they get the joy of paying ridiculous parking fees - like in all big cities.

So on the 3rd or 4th day in Japan, I bought a bike. Just a basic one to get around. Its the light blue one in the picture above. Standing at my apartment building’s bike parking. Cost me something around ¥10,000 (about a 100USD).

So, grabbed my camera and went out for a little ride.

One of the thing I noticed is how perfect the roads everywhere are - even far far away up in the mountains.

Some abandoned bikes. A lot of the time people just leave their bike somewhere and don’t bother coming back for it for whatever reason. Typically after a few weeks they’re tagged as abandoned and then in another week or two are taken away.

Went into the center of the city. One of the things I love about Nagoya is how green it is. Trees and other plants everywhere.

Stairs going down to the underground shopping area. Quite a large shopping area. Takes about 10 minutes to walk from one end of it to the other, all underground.

Paid bike parking. Usually you only see these in the center of the city as anywhere else people just park their bikes wherever there’s a free space.

Standing next to Nagoya Station and facing south. Building in the center is a school - mostly fashion/design. Building on left is, for the most part, Toyota’s HQ. Photos from it in a future article.

Another random shot on the street.

Again, perfect roads.

It’s funny. Detroit, “motor city”, “car capital of the world”, etc etc etc... all the typical names for it. Ironically, this “car capital” has some of the shittiest (and putting it very lightly) roads I have ever seen. What’s weird is that every single year they try fixing them. Throw a few shovels of asphalt into the potholes (that’s their idea if “repair”), and leave. Typically this happens in the fall, so naturally by time spring comes, all the crap they threw into the potholes, has already washed out with rain, snow, ice and salt, and you’re stuck with even bigger potholes then you had the year before. No joke, open up Google Maps, and take a look at the center of Detroit - you can literally see the potholes from a satellite.

Naturally car repair shops love this place, the roads alone bring in so much customers.

As a bonus here's a panorama of the bike parking next to a relatively small train station. Click on the image above for the huge version.

Requisite 1.1

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