Sidecar in Japan

April 28, 2023 In the company of Andreas, fellow Dane Rasmus (another motorcycle dealer) I head out of town in the morning, Andreas cursing his fellow motorists all the way. Near Fukushima, three hours north of Tokyo and an hour west of The Death Zone, there are seven race tracks, that this weekend are used for drifting.  For the uninitiated, drifting is a type of motorsport where people have their cars go sideways most of the time, tyres spinning and smoking. It’s not about speed as much as it is about making those perfect (or not) powerslides, solo, in pairs, even in groups. Depending on the level of enthusiasm and skills, expenses can be limited to tyres and the occasional rear bumper, or you  can go full in and tune everything to your heart’s and wallet’s delight.  Rasmus’ Toyota Mk. II looks like one that had two careful owners and after them six or seven suicidally reckless ones, so it’s nigh perfect for this game. We install a roll cage, to satisfy the ryle book come track time,

  April 30, 2023 All the while we've been staying at 'The Drifter's Lodge', previously operated as an actual inn but now the place to stay during weekends like this. Aside from our six-man crew, there's a bunch of other drift guys staying here, as one of the people working at a track workshop has the place and graciously lets us stay free of charge. Andreas and some of the others have come here for years when up for the festivities, and have made an offroad track for the two small quads parked beneath the house. Takes a little while to get both of them started, but the small offroad course seems like too much fun to miss. The other project is to work some more on the dam on the stream running next to the house.  Back at track things have quieted some, a few drifters staying around for a fix or five more. I go have a look at the zoo in the middle of the track system - deaf animals, I presume - but the big cats in their small bare cages are a pitiful sight. This is wh

  April 28, 2023 Jetlagged, still  can’t sleep, trying to make sure I get the bike out of customs and insured before the country goes on holiday. Somehow it seems to work out, thanks in large part to Andreas, the Danish motorcycle guy in Nishi-Kawaguchi, part of Greater Tokyo.  Dealing with customs means going to Narita with Leopard Express founder Takuda-san with a pound worth of paper documentation. Imagine the combined customs departements of Kasakhstan, Burkina Faso and Cuba, except one can’t bribe them. But six hours later I’m back in town, with a promise the bike will be so too by Friday.  Friend of Andreas drove an hour to Narita, where he helped convincing customs that the bike has insurance.  Ticket vending machine at the labyrinthine Tokyo subway system.  Still manned - guess it keeps unemployment down a bit.  Evening bacon dinner in a cubicle with my own little grill.  The cute snubnosed Kei cars are all over the place, and I’ve seen a fair number of the original Minis by no

May 1, 2023 I take the Shinkansen most of the way down to the port warehouse where the bike awaits, spend an hour assembling everything and off I go on Tokyo’s elevated  toll roads towards Kawaguchi, to store the bike until Axel arrives and we set off. The first 22 kilometers go well, after which the bike calls it quits, thankfully on a stretch where a ramp doesn't get me stuck in a place with no shoulders. To make along story short, it takes a combined two flatbed trucks, eight guys from the highway patrol and emergency road service to get me to my destination. Add to this that my phone is dying, traffic noise and emergency service telephone operators who cannot speak English, and a brief rainstorm, so the whole ordeal takes seven hours, before I can park the bike near Andreas' workshop. Without his efforts on the phone I'd probably still be stuck out there. Am also glad that the roadside assistance insurance went into effect about 45 minutes before this happened. I'm

May 2 & 3, 2023 We drag the bike around to Ohira-san, a motorcycle tuner Andreas knows and admires. Guy used to race, of course, but now has a nice workshop making go-fast bits for modern machinery.  I work on the bike for a while, and eventually Ohira takes and interest too, going through the igintion system and making the electrics work again. Japan har moved on from 6 volts systems a while ago, but Ohira manages to get the drained battery charged anyway. Bike still soots up the plugs, though, so we call it a day, returning only to pay him and handle over the bottle of Gammel Dansk, a Danish bitter schnapps that you normally have to be 5th generation Dane to fully appreciate. Next day doesn't bring any improvement, and the bike actually runs worse than when I started. That's usually what happens when I start playing with carb settings. Ohira then tells me to take off the sidecar, so we can put the Nimbus on his dyno. A full afternoon and 15 runs later brings no improvemen

May 4, 2023 Reading through pics of the carburettor pages of an English book about Nimbus maintenance that a friend back home sent me, I realize that the small factory booklet has got a few things wrong, and after an hour or two the plugs finally look ok. That was after just starting it up, so a test ride tomorrow will bring the real verdict. Rasmus had stayed up half the night reading about Nimbus too, and did his part to get the old girl going. I'm still underslept but finally past jetlag, and seeing that the bike seems to work, I'll mention some of my obeservations the last week about Tokyo: Annoyingly many more foreigners, compared to last time 17 years ago. (What are you guys doing here? Got bored messing up Barcelona and Venice? You're not exotic like the Japanese are. Go home.) Overweight Japanese - didn't notice that many 17 years ago. (Americans visiting Denmark every five years say the same about the Danes.) There are practically none of the large custom scoot