Pangs of Mobility

I bought a bicycle. Not a cool one, or even a sorta cool one, just a jive "shopping bike" as they're called here. It's gray and has a little thumb bell you can use to get people out of your way as you careen down the sidewalk. Which is what people on bikes do here, by the way. In the US (where I'm from) bicycles are considered roadworthy, so bicyclists are expected to use the streets and obey the various rules of the road. But in Japan a bicyclist is expected to behave like a pedestrian, and use the sidewalks and crosswalks and just about anything other than the streets. Riding a bike in the street here is likely to get you run down like a common ped. I take my chances there, though, because trying to get around this town on the sidewalks is about like skateboarding through the streets of Bangladesh during high-water season. It just doesn't happen.

But people try it anyway, so you're forever in a state of mild panic whenever you stroll around the streets of Tokyo, dodging speeding cyclists who race through the ambulating throng like it's some kind of Olympic obstacle course. I always glare at these folks, thinking, "This is the sidewalk, you cretin," no doubt looking exactly like the creeping motorists who glare at me as I ride past, thinking, "This is the street, you cretin!" It's these very cultural exchanges that make my life here a rich one indeed. Yep.

I dropped in to Bullets in Nishi-Azabu the other night for an evening of DJ wizardry, sprawling with friends on the floor there where usually I expect to find white mattresses scattered about. On that evening they had pulled most of them out to make room for the DJ gear and whatnot, but we drank our wine and listened to the tunes and made the best of it. These two cats below appeared rather suddenly after the second DJ act had ended and whipped out some spontaneous manzai on the gathered crowd. I understood maybe a third of what they were saying, but based on the tepid crowd response I guess I wasn't missing much.

Bullets is kewl. In fact, a lot of Nishi-Azabu seems pretty cool. And with my new gig starting at the end of the month, I'll be just down the road. More on that next time...