mission.japan

Bicycle protocol

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

When it comes to bicycles in Japan, there are several prohibitions in effect that hardly anyone obeys.

If you want to get around in Japan, you should definitely have a bicycle. But bicycles can’t go everywhere. Or rather, they can, but they’re not supposed to. Perhaps same examples would help.

Example the first: shopping arcades

There are several covered shopping arcades in Okayama. Most arcades have signs prohibiting the riding of bicycles through the arcade posted at every street intersection. But a sign isn’t a police officer, so many people will simply ignore the command and ride their bicycles anywhere in the arcade. On rare occasions a uniformed officer will be present to enforce the order, but this would usually amount to nothing more than an irate whistle-blowing and the display of crossed arms—the Japanese gesture for “don’t do that”.

Example the second: the station’s no-parking zone

A fair amount of city money went into several dozen “No Parking” signs placed at regular intervals inside a three-block radius concentrated around the east (read: busiest) exit of the train station. Naturally the signs are in Japanese (maybe English too, I can’t remember at the moment), but they’re accompanied by pictures of a bicycle and a motorbike, each with a bright X through the center. Strangely enough, it’s right next to these signs that you find the most bicycles. It’s not a small number, either—we’re talking literally hundreds of illegally parked bicycles within the no-parking zone during the busiest hours of the day. As far as I can tell nothing is done by the city to combat the problem.

Example the third: umbrellas

Riding a bicycle while holding an umbrella is one of the skills practically every bicyclist in Japan has—umbrella fu, if you will. It also happens to be illegal, with threatened fines of about $200. Does this stop anyone? Of course not (and I admit that, not being in possession of any sort of rain gear, I always carry an umbrella while biking in the rain). I can understand the reasoning behind the legislation—one hand on the umbrella leaves only one hand for the bike, which means potentially more traffic incidents. But this is another one of those cases of the offenders being too numerous for any enforcement to have any impact.

Comments

David Schaab wrote on July 05:

I know you took your blades. Do you have a bike to use while there also? How is the protocol relative to bikes on what appears to be very narrow roads. FYI: I did 28 miles of the TB-VA-Howe loop—good hills (230’ change in elevations alonge the route).

Gordon McCleary wrote on July 06:

And I thought Japanese were precise, organized and law abiding!Does this outrageous behavior extend into the realms of government?

Derek Schaab wrote on July 06:

Bikes typically get handed down through short-termers, so the bike I’m using now belonged to Ashleigh while she was here. (Similarly Matt has Jeremy’s bike.) There are definitely a lot of situations where the roads and sidewalks get very narrow and crowded, but surprisingly this doesn’t cause many problems. Drivers in Japan are well trained in yielding to pedestrians and cyclists—there have been a few times when I forgot to check for cars at a crossing and found out halfway across that there was an approaching vehicle (but said vehicle always stopped for me).

In most cases Japan is a very law-abiding society. After all, they do have one of the lowest crime rates in the world. I suppose for the minor laws (like the abovementioned bicycle regulations or rules about when you should put your trash out on trash collection days) there’s less incentive to follow them, particularly if they’re inconvenient. Japan also has its fair share of corporate corruption, with the most recent incidents being the Livedoor fiasco and the Murakami insider trading incident. But I think for the most part people follow the rules here.

David Schaab wrote on July 06:

Unlike Texans on the narrow (read no shoulder) roads. I could touch the mirrors on a couple of cars last week. In Sherman, I stopped for a cyclist only to have the car behind me honking his horn. Go figure. According to Texas rules, I guess I should have continued because a bicycle is considered the same as my vehicle.

Derek Schaab wrote on July 07:

There are many times when I’ve been close enough to touch cars. (Actually, a fun thing I’ve found is to go to a particular road downtown and chase taxis. Lots of stoplights, so it’s good practice for starts and not bad for interval training.) The amount of room I get depends on the driver—most give me plenty of room, some give me the minimum, and some are afraid to pass (especially when I’m going really fast).

Andrew reminded me of a fourth example I forgot to add in: futarinori (two people on one bike). This offense has a hefty fine but it’s not enforced often, so you see it all the time. Most of the time it’s guy/girl pairs, but guy/guy and girl/girl pairings aren’t uncommon. (When there are two people on one bike the person in the back usually holds the umbrella, leaving the driver with both hands free, although whether this is an improvement over the one-handed umbrella technique is debatable.) Andrew said he actually saw a couple today being talked to by the police (apparently for futarinori), so I guess there are times when the rule is applied.