Oh Japan, you and your bikes.
y helo thar all, this is Pazuzu, Eirtaku’s (resident?) Japan correspondent, here to post nice cynical rants about Japan just to remind everyone out there what exactly it is you’re not missing.
First off the bat is a nice rant about bikes. Yes, bikes.
If anyone remembers that first episode of Pokemon all those years ago, it was the one where Misty’s bike got totally fried by Pikachu. Now, I think that was a subconscious thing on the part of the writer and after living in Japan, I can see why.
On my way back from daily karate training, I always notice the same sign by a crossroads detailing the amounts of injuries and deaths caused on that particular crossroads. (Why would you publicise this?) And…actually, the cars aren’t as much of a threat here. Besides the weird thing at traffic lights whereby a car can perfectly legally turn on to a road where people are crossing. Seriously, even if you have the nice green man telling you it’s safe to cross, you still have cars turning the corner towards you. Is that supposed to be safe?
Anyway, the biggest danger on the streets are bikes. They’re everywhere, like a swarm of ants going in every direction and destroying all in their path. If they’re approaching you, they’ll (sometimes) ring their bell to tell you GET OUT OF MY WAY PEON, but they don’t slow down one bit. It’s like they want to run you down. Maybe this is how Japan deals with its population growth.
It’s especially dangerous when you’re crossing a road behind a group of people moving slowly (insert machine gun noises here; Tokyo people are notoriously slow-moving), and there’s a bike bearing down on you at full speed. I bet that’s the cause of most of these crossroad injuries, not the comparably gentle cars.
I’m sure most of you have been to mainland Europe. Know the crazy drivers there? The ones that speed around corners, taking out about half of the pedestrians? I miss those drivers. I swear, if they ever make a Grand Theft Auto based in Japan, the most dangerous vehicle available in the game will be the common bicycle.
Did you take that photo?
Of course. ¬.¬ It’s a view from my window.
yeh, I remember people on bikes rang their bells at me to move, but cars turning a corner would stop politely to let you go.
ps. nice pic.
Bikes are a killer! In Dublin there are terrible and everywhere else. I have been nearly knocked down by a bike many times then cars!
In conclusion cars are safer then bikes!
Yeah cool pic.
Just on a side note, im still here in tokyo and from what i can see the only reason there is a problem with bicycles is because the there are no bicycle lanes over here(not that we use them in ireland either mind you
Well i remember a couple of times in Japan, there were lanes for bicycles and walkers… I have never been sure of which lane to take though, was it “Forbidden to bicycles” or “Only for bicycles” written ???
No matter which one I took, there were always a few people ringing hatefully to myself :/
I really hated bikes in Japan too…
Yes you are correct, there were bike lanes which nobody used because there were always hundreds of bikes parked along those lanes!