alpha whiskey hotel

Well, another one of those Darwin-defying cyclists just about ruined my drive home tonight.

There were 2 lanes of traffic in each direction, and a red light up ahead.  I was moving along in the outside lane; the inside lane was already backed up from the red light (Japanese drivers often forget that the outside lane is available which is why it is often free-moving even when the inside lane is backed up). All of a sudden I was thinking to myself, “Hmm, I think I just saw something from the corner of my eye, better be care–” and BAM there he was.

Now, for those readers already familiar with Tokyo cyclists, or those who have read my earlier posts on the matter, you may safely skip the remainder of this paragraph, for it goes without saying.  For everyone else, however, you may be surprised to know what this man was wearing.  Black from head to toe.  And of course, his bicycle had no reflectors or lights.  He was the perfect ninja bicyclist.

He had evidently crossed the street, driving through the stopped lane of cars without checking to see if both lanes were stopped.  I had little choice but to leave bits of tyre and brake pad all over the street as I screeched to a halt to avoid him.  And of course he had the gall to give me the stink-eye, as if I had committed a horrible sin by driving along in my lane exactly as the law dictated.

But I finally figured out what it is that bothers me so much about the idiot cyclists here.  It’s that when I finally manage to do one of them in, Japanese laws say that it’ll be me that’s held 100% liable.  It’ll be my driving license that gets revoked, and it’ll be my insurance that has to pay up, no matter how poorly dressed the guy was, or how egregiously he was breaking the law.

Ah well, in the mean time I’ll continue to get my revenge by honking at every cyclist who I catch being an idiot.

To any motorist in Japan, regardless of whether that motorist is driving a moped, motorcycle, car, truck, bus, or even train, nothing strikes fear into the heart like the sight of a bicyclist.

Bicyclists in Japan are the absolute epitome of poor “traffic citizens”. When they’re on the sidewalk, they weave in and out of pedestrians; they ride while texting, smoking, and holding umbrellas; and they mount/dismount moving bicycles, much less skillfully than they believe, causing general mayhem.

But actually, it’s cyclists’ behaviour on the road, where they’re supposed to be, that is even more terrifying. They ignore traffic lights without paying the slightest bit of attention to whether a car might be coming; if it’s inconvenient to cross to the other side of the road, they’ll gladly just drive on the wrong side; they’ll unpredictably switch between the street, the sidewalk, and the pedestrian crossings… Really, how there aren’t more bicycle-caused traffic accidents is beyond me.

(At this point, I’ll point out that the real spokeheads aren’t the problem.. Anybody here who has an actual decent bicycle and some riding gear generally are good traffic citizens. It’s the 95% of people, the ones who ride the disposable 3-speed rustmobiles, that are the real problem.)

A couple months ago, I actually witnessed a bicyclist whose immunity had apparently run out. Examining the following intersection (the intersection of Yamate-dori and Shin-Mejiro-dori, for those familiar with Tokyo):

I was at the position of the car marked “D”, waiting to turn right. There was a truck behind me, where “T” on the picture is. Now, when you’re turning right at that intersection (as I was and the truck was), your attention is focused on where the green circles are. Basically you’re looking there for mopeds who are legally coming straight through the intersection (nobody besides mopeds can do this). To a lesser extent, you are also checking for pedestrians on the zebra crossing, though pedestrians are slow and predictable and generally not a problem.

But as I was turning the corner, I happened to notice bicyclist B. You notice that she was going down the street the wrong way, went up the access ramp the wrong way, and then switched over to the pedestrian crossing. I saw her from the corner of my eye, and thought to myself, “If that truck behind me doesn’t see her, then there’s gonna be some trouble”. I checked it out in my rearview mirror, and sure enough, the truck hit the cyclist square-on.

So, I U-turned onto the sidewalk and rode back to the intersection and called 119 for an ambulance (a first for me) while the truck driver tended to the cyclist. There was a lot of blood, and she’d probably broken her leg or something, but it seemed like she was going to be fine.

Sadly, though, although the cyclist was clearly being riding stupidly and illegally, I still do have to give some of the blame to the truck. Anybody who’s driven in Japan even for one day knows to be super-vigilant of cyclists. That said: cyclists, whoever is in the right or the wrong, you will lose in an accident with a truck. So, come on.. get some common sense.

For those who don’t read Japanese.. These are driving directions, one of which is “Make a U-Turn in front of the Setagaya Police Station”

Note.. I’m writing this for the interest of friends and family who are curious about how stuff works in Japan, but also in the hopes of helping people out if they are searching for info about motorcycle licensing in Japan…

Almost 3 years ago, when I converted my Canadian driving license to a Japanese one, I was told that if I wanted to convert my Motorcycle endorsement at the same time, it would take longer and cost more cash. “Nah, don’t bother. When am I ever going to ride a motorcycle?”

Well, I suppose I should never say never. About a year and a half ago, I bought a little auto-shift scooter for zipping around Tokyo (legal on a car license), and when it went to the big bike yard in the sky, I bought a manual-shift moped to replace it. Between the two bikes, I have done over 13,000km in and around Tokyo, but I realized that I would like a bit more. After all, it would be nice to strap a tent, sleeping bag, and chair to the back of a bike, leave Tokyo on a sunny Friday afternoon, and just see where the weekend takes me. This would be.. well, problematic at best on my 50cc bike, so it was time to investigate getting licensed for a bigger bike.

License Categories
Japanese motorcycle licenses are divided into 4 categories:

• Moped (Gentsuki): Up to 50cc. Separate license or included in a car license. Speed limit 30 km/h, must stay in left-most lane, can not do a direct right turn at many intersections.
• Small Bike (Kogata): Up to 125cc. Speed limit 50 km/h.
• Medium Bike (Futsuu, formerly Chuugata): Up to 400cc. Up to 250cc does not require yearly inspections.
• Large Bike (Oogata): Anything over 400cc.

I decided to go for the Chuugata license.. Those bikes are big enough to get me out of the city, without being so big as to be prohibitively expensive to buy or operate. Not only that, but the exam is not nearly as rigorous as the Oogata exam.

Contents of the Exam
To use a martial arts analogy, the test has both kata (how you drive in general) and waza (specific techniques that you must demonstrate). For the mid-size bike test, the techniques are as follows:

• Balance Beam (Ipponbashi): A balance beam 15 meters long and 20 centimeters wide. You must stop less than 2 meters before getting on the balance beam (so you can’t take a run at it) and you must take more than 7 seconds to cross it (so you can’t just speed across). Falling off or putting your feet down fails the test.
• Slalom: 5 cones spaced 3 meters apart. Slalom through them in under 8 seconds. Touching a cone fails the test.
• Crank Course: Two sharp left turns followed by two sharp right turns. Touching a pylon fails the test.
• S-Curve: Left turn, right curve, left curve, left turn. Touching a pylon fails the test.
• Emergency Stop: Stop from 45 km/h (by law only 40 km/h but the way the test is set up necessitates 45 or even 50).
• Uphill Start: An uphill start on a 10-degree slope. This doesn’t sound like much but that bike feels really heavy.

As for the driving part, it’s just regular driving around their track, set up so they can see you change lanes, turn right and left, use a traffic light and stop signs, etc.

The procedure at Fuchuu
I went to Fuchu Driving License Test Centre.. The other choice for Tokyo residents is Samezu (near Shinagawa). Fuchu is more convenient to my apartment and my office so I went there. Anyway, the procedure is very simple and casual. Make sure that your test voucher has 4600 yen worth of stamps (purchased from the stamp counter on the 1st floor). Take the test voucher up to the driving examination room on the 2nd floor, trade it for a green paper that your examiner will write on. Take the green paper out to the bike track, write your name, address, and phone number on the back, hand it and your car license to the examiner. Sit around and wait until your turn. While the guy before you is being told why he failed, you get to take the bike for one lap around the perimeter of the course to get used to its handling. Come back to the starting gate, wait for the examiner to tell you you can go.

My specific test experiences

• Test 1: Fell off the ipponbashi. This was my only time having trouble with any of the techniques.
• Tests 2, 3, 4: My riding was not genki enough. It’s hard to describe genki; best that I can do is “the opposite of listless.” Basically they wanted me to accelerate harder, drive faster, and brake harder. Believe me, I have no problems accelerating or driving fast, as a look at my unfortunate Japan Traffic Violation History will confirm. But this test course is small, about 100 meters from one end to the other. And nothing in my nature or my driving training will let me roll out of a turn, see a red light 50 meters ahead, and accelerate for it. So it took a long time to psych myself up for driving fast in this artificial situation.
• Tests 5, 6, 7, 8: Got over the genki driving problem, failed here for a variety of reasons. “Incorrect turn/lane change procedure”, “Toe pointed too far out on gear shift”, “Used brakes after entering a curve”. A common theme here was also “wide left turns” (Japan is left-driving, so left turns are the tight ones).
• Tests 9 and 10: Had these in the bag, then got excited when I knew I’d passed and made stupid mistakes. For test 9, it was stopping with my right foot down (instead of the left) while parking; for test 10 it was forgetting my genki driving after passing the last challenge, the uphill start.
• Test 11: Finally passed!

Miscellaneous Advice

• People often say that you should expect to pass your bike test in 3-5 tries. Given the percentage of people that I saw passing at Fuchuu, I would say that I am right on par with my 11 tries, as less than 10% of people would pass on any given day. Keep this in mind when deciding to take the tests, rather than going to riding school (which will pass you upon graduation). All in all, this was still cheaper than riding school, but it took a lot of time. I was lucky to have an office that is not so far from the testing centre, an understanding boss, and a moped for getting me there and back more quickly than public transit.
• There is an official system of demerit points, etc., but at Fuchu this seems to not really be in use. You are either good enough to pass or not, where “good enough to pass” is defined as “not having made any mistakes.”
• In the same vein, officially you are supposed to be allowed to continue the test as long as you have not done anything classes as an automatic fail (hitting a pylon, putting your feet down on the balance beam, stalling, etc.). However, in reality, you will be stopped mid-test and told to return to the starting gate if the examiner sees no way that you will pass. The farther you get, the better you did.
• If you have never had a bike license in Japan before, you will not get your license right away upon passing the test. Rather, you will be given a list of several driving schools. Pick one in your area and you will get a coupon for a 3-hour class there. After you have taken that class you can go back and get your license.
• For foreigners: This whole process requires decent Japanese knowledge. If you are hopeless at Japanese, bring along a friend, or consider doing riding school (also available in English and other languages) instead.

Well, that’s it. Anybody who sees this and would like to ask anything in particular, feel free to email me or leave me a comment in this blog. I can’t claim to be an expert, but I have now seen a great number of riding tests so maybe I can help explain something…

From Japan Today:

TOKYO — The average retail price of regular gasoline in Japan came to 154.30 yen per liter as of Monday, down 0.70 yen from two weeks earlier, the Oil Information Center said Wednesday.

So, nobody said a darned thing when gas shot up from the high 130s/low 140s to 155 a few weeks back, but when it dropped 3/4 of a yen, boy howdy is that good news!

I’m glad that my fuel economy is over 80 mpg…

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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!”
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.