Sidecar in Japan

  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 Os...

May 6, 2023 All over town you see the Honda Gyro. It’s an odd little scooter with a two wheel engine unit at the rear, its tiny tires planted solidly on the ground while the the forward part tilts like a normal bike in turns. The little buggers are everywhere, being used for light cargo transport. BSA Ariel in England used the concept but failed to market it succesfully, after which Honda bought the patent in the late 1970s. Honda never looked back and made seven different models. Still builds the Gyro in several roofed versions. Seems like Honda has cornered the market, because no other factory makes them (although the Chinese may have copied the idea). 50 cc and a modest 4-5bhp makes it usable for city duty only, but who knows, maybe there are tuning kits for them to be found somewhere.  Always on the lookout for something unusual to ride, I find this one is attractive for its canopy as well. A container full of them to Denmark, then, to be reg’d as 45 mopeds? Andreas sees them a...

May 8, 2023 The travel companion needs sleep, so instead of visiting the shrine with all the war criminals, I go see Sasaki Osca somewhere west of Tokyo center. We met last time I was here where he took me to meet a bunch of enthuiastic riders of his miniature Monkey bikes. They are about two-thirds the size of the already small real Monkey bikes, but are road legal and at 30-35 mph top speed relatively safe in traffic. I think. I rode one last time, as my debut on twisty Japanese mountain roads, which was as fun as it was scary. Their four stroke engines range in size from 31 to 36 cc, the things sell for $3,340 / dkk 22.568 apiece, and so far he has managed to shift over a thousand of them. The ones with two 25 cc engines cost about twice as much, but then their top speed is 45-50 mph.  Years ago he tried to revive the German motorcycle marque Horex, but only managed to make a handful of the sportsbikes that used his own frame design and the 650 cc single made by Honda. He still ...

  May 8 & 9 Bike gets packed up with my gear and Axel's gear, and the lid almost can't be closed. Never thought I'd see the day. The little Grom is not freway legal, so we ride through endless New Jersey-esque suburbia at an average of 14 mph/20 kph, after which an awful highway takes us to the resort town of Ikaho, a psycho headwind throwing the Nimbus outfit about and limiting to speed to 40 mph/60 kph. When we finally make it Axel is done for, and checks in at the first hotel we stop at, which I think is way to pricey for me. I book another one online, and find it an hour later in an area of distinctly seedy area for 'hotels' that go by hourly rates. Should have know the low price was too good to be true, so soon I'm back at the posh hotel, which at least has some old-world class to it. Very traditional rooms too: Tamami mats and a thin futon, which I make softer by adding another six futons on top of it. ---------------- Getting breakfast today make us e...

  Installing small sized screw with silicone, to prevent water seeping into the sidecar. First modern trike I've seen over here; 6-cylinder Honda Gold Wing with loads of extra chrome panels, windshield wiper and LED lights along the running boards. Sweet excess.... The cat shrine. We get going late, spend a few hours at The Matsumoto Castle in the company of an excellent volunteer guide named Keiko. Axel - ever the gentleman - asks her about her age, which turns out to be 71, about 15 years older than we both would have guessed. I think she had a fun time too, chatting aaway with us. As for the castle itself, methinks it was more interesting from the outside, but of course the history behind it and the Edo period in which it played a significant role was worth learning about: 260 years of peace, which isn't something my part of the world can brag about. Axel refuses to even look at the Nimbus' electrics, his hatred of 6 volt systems running unusually deep, but insist that s...

May 9, 2023 I always liked Japanese cars of the 1970, and also the early 360 cc Kei cars, and this museum has quite a lot of either type.  Hino Contessa, Japanese version of the Renault Dauphine. Hino already produced the  smaller 4CV on license. This affinity for mounting side view mirrors way up front.... ....extends to their Kei cars too. Small twin cylinder Honda engined race car. Note position of front wheels relative to driver. One of the many American movies proving that they can do very well indeed without a  big budget. See if you can stream it from somewhere. Menacing WW2 Tiger tank, made of concrete, facing a similar Sherman tank across the walkway. Mazda Cosmo, the company's first foray into Wankel engined cars. Mazda is so far the only company making this type of engine work properly. (Fun fact: Felix Wankel, inventor of the concept, was a bloody Nazi, who even managed to get kicked out of the party twice - see  https://jalopnik.com/the-inventor-of-the-r...

  May 13, 2023 Kaikado Kustom I interview Maseo about his shop and the motorcycles, models and sculptures he makes. As for the bikes he started the business 24 years ago, and has since then built about 100 motorcycles, mostly Kawasakis and (of course) Harleys. That is three a year, which is pretty good. Incidentally Ford hotrods are have become part of his business, witness the four worn looking ones inside and outside the workshop. Regular maintenance of bikes is also part of the work Kaikado Kustom performs, like the engine rebuild he is going to perform on an otherwise pristine stock Honda CB750 that just arrived. Aside from the regular turnover, he has kept a number of bikes for himself, like a stock, last year Rikuo, a Harley copy built under license. A very rare Czechoslovakian four stroke 500 cc Jawa twin with a king cam stands next to it, and a 500 cc Kawasaki Mach III two stroke triple is part of the lineup too. And across from them one finds two Tsubasa competition single...