My new ride...

So I bought a new bike yesterday. I consider myself pretty fortunate to be able to live and work in the same place but the 15 minute walk to work every day was starting to gnaw at me a little. It's amazing the freedom that a bicycle can give you. Today I biked two stations over to go watch Star Wars again. It took about 20 minutes-walking probably would have been an hour and 20.

I probably would have bought a bike a long time ago but I was hesitant because I thought coming from a different country I wouldn't really know the proper Japanese bike etiquette. It turns out that I worried for nothing because the Japanese don't have a clue what the proper bike etiquette is. They ride on the left side of the street, the right side of the street, the wrong side of the street. Basically if there is a free space in the street somewhere they are going to fill it. They ride on sidewalks, they double up and in one case quadrupled up (a mother, kid on the front, kid on the back and kid on her back.)

They ride with umbrellas in their hands, they ride while texting on their phone, they ride with umbrellas in their hand AND texting on their phone. I even saw one kid biking down the street with his head buried in a manga comic book. Helmet usage stands at approximately 0% (1 in 10 babies in the baby seat might have a helmet.) Streets combined with bikers is the definition of the word chaos and yet for all that I haven't actually seen an accident yet-between Japanese that is. I on the other hand, lack the intuitive biking skills that these people seem to possess. For example I can barely text message sitting down on a couch never mind while riding a bike. And I also lack the ability to squeeze the 35 cm handlebars through a 36 cm space between a truck and a telephone pole. Then there's the fact that my brakes seem to be reversed and every time I try to stop quickly I almost go flying over the handlebars.

Oh well-it's better than trudging along I suppose. I'm still trying to think of a good name for her.