Last june, I bought myself a used scooter. Believe me, this thing is not a big “get out of my way” hog by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it’s powered by the very same engine and drive train that runs such things as chainsaws and weed-whackers. Still, it can pretty much beat a car in Tokyo (traffic here usually only moves at about 40 km/h, and I can blow right past huge lines of cars that are waiting for red lights…)
The thing’s been great for me; No longer is Tokyo for me just a collection of islands that surround the train stations that I go to. Now I have a great understanding of how it all works together. Every day I get to witness people going about their lives as I travel from home to the dojo, from client to client, from the office to dinner with friends… That said, there are still some things that just stick in my craw:
- Cyclists who ride on the wrong side of the street. The moped law says that I have to stick in the left (outside) lane. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve moved right to avoid a parked car and almost come to a head-on collision with some cyclist who is riding up the wrong side of the road. If you’re gonna be on the road, obey the laws of the road, yeesh.
- Motorcycle riders who have magical feet of balancing. These guys ride along with their feet 1cm above the pavement, going 50 km/h. Presumably the feet are out there to help keep them balanced, but come on. I can keep my bike upright at 10% of that speed. And let’s be realistic; if your motorcycle decides that it’s going to break the law of gyroscopic procession and tip over when you’re going 50 km/h, there’s not much that your feet are going to be able to do to prevent that.
- In a similar vein: Scooter riders who ride with their knees stuck straight out to the sides. Seriously, guys, if they need to be aired out that badly, you should probably just take a shower or something.
- Utility trucks with lights and sirens. OK, the gas company, I agree with 100%. Even the water company, I could see them having to go to some emergency. But the electric company?! “We’ve got an electricity leak down at Tameike! Ohms and volts are spilling everywhere! Better put on the siren!”
- The fact that ambulances have to beg people to move out of the way. Jeez, people, there’s a dying person in there. Yes, that dying person needs to be somewhere even more urgently than you do. Deal with it.
- People who throw cigarettes out the window. Even in Toronto, this one always annoyed me, in a “litterbugs!” sense. Now that I’m on a scooter, it takes a much more personal meaning. Since none of these geniuses has managed to hit me yet, I don’t know from personal experience, but it’s only a matter of time before I find out first-hand that it is neither fun nor conducive to safe riding to have a crotch full of burning tobacco.
- Left-Hand Drive + Expensive Car = Motorcycle Lane Gets Blocked. It doesn’t happen with cheap left-hand drive cars (garbage trucks, delivery vehicles, someone’s crappy buick station wagon that they bought while they were transferred to the USA). And it doesn’t happen with expensive right-hand drive cars. But you take a Mercedes, put a steering wheel on the left side, and I can guarantee you that that person will be half in the motorcycle lane and half in his own lane every single time he pulls up to a red light. Since the left-hand drive would tend to make him sit right of his lane, the only reason I can think of for this phenomenon is that the guy thinks of himself as More Important Than Everybody Else™ (he is a middle manager, after all), and it gets his goat that people on $400 scooters are just blowing by his expensive car while he sits in traffic.
Even so, it’s a lot of fun.. Just had to get that off my chest.
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