Bikes in Japan

While I was in Hikone, I got the impression that all anyone had in Japan was these unrideable POS commuter bikes. Once in a rare while I would see someone on an honest-to-goodness road bike, once even in spandex, but I can count the number of times that occurred on one hand. Anyway, I borrowed one of the crap bikes from the school so I could go shopping and stuff, and while it was ludicrously undersized it did have a bell AND a honky horn on it, so that was alright.

Anyway, now I’m in Tokyo and I am learning that Hikone was not typical. Not that Tokyo should be seen as typical, but here there is a much greater variety of bikes. There are a lot of messengers, and they tend to ride shiny new singlespeeds, almost always tastefully colored, rather than the fashionably shitty fixed gears that you so often see in America.
They have the commuters and foldable bikes here, too, but I’ve seen some that look like they have internal gearing or something. This one was suspended in some weird way. There was one foldable bike that had monstrous pegs on it. I also saw some dude on a bianchi somethingorother.

There are also a lot of bikes made by car manufacturers here. I had heard of Cadillac bikes, but they were just a curiosity, really. I was surprised at first, but now I’m used to seeing once in a while a Chevrolet bike. The best one was this Dodge BMX bike.

“That thing got a Hemi?”
YES

I'm staying now in Osaka. There are a lot more hostess bars and a lot fewer messengers. I went to one enormous underground complex that had every kind of shopping you could imagine. One display was advertising Sharp TVs and had some silly biking on it.

Edit: I can't get it to upload. I'll try later