Scooters and Bars

 Scooters and bars

May 5, 2023

First Nimbus test ride and an old guy on an old Mitsubishi Silver Pidgeon scooter rides by in the other direction. I do a 180, catch up, flag him down. Like all old bike folks of course Toshio Hayashi has a handful of old vehicles, like a Subaru 360 and a Mazda R360 Coupe, both incredibly cute first gen. Kei cars with 360 cc engines. Got a small Daihatsu trike too.

We’re about done talking and taking pics of each other’s bikes when a Fuji Rabbit rolls by and the chase is on again. This time I just follow him to whereever he goes (a 7-11 parking lot) and end up talking old bikes with Tomo long enough for a slightly customized split window VW to arrive too. Mototalk ensues, as my boheme parents had a string of them. His other claim to fame is a serious looking custom bike with an air cooled VW engine.

1960-ish Mitsubishi Silver Pigeon.

1966-67 Fuji Rabbit Junior in about the same nice worn condition as the Silver Pidgeon on first pic.

'65 VW bus and Osawa Tetsuya, who made the carbon fiber rear parts himself. 
The car also has electric power steering - never saw that before.

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Axel from Denmark has arrived, seemingly without jetlag and waiting for us in Ikebukuru, the neighborhood that used to be bad - at least by Tokyo standards - but which now has gotten safe and very touristy. Still fun, with what must be the highest concentration of 150 square feet sized bars on this planet. Hundreds of 'em. ‘The Death Route’ of yore in Copenhagen involved more than a dozen pubs of significance but at least you had all night to drink a strong beer and a small bottle of schnapps at each  place. I doubt any of us would make it to the end of a block, were we to try something similar here.

Later only Andreas and Rasmus make it to the train station in time, while Axel walks close to 5 kilometers to his hotel and I manage 2 kilometers before hailing a cab. I'm not 67 anymore, and I can feel it.

Love hotel with short term rentals. 2,000 yen is about dkk 100, or $14.



Claw game parlor seen on the walk back to my hotel.


Again a still pic doesn't do the real thing justice, as this was a magnificent 
light show worthy of a carnival stall.

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