INTERESTING JAPAN CULTURAL THINGY #1: Bicycles

Welcome to a special edition of Chris's Gaijin at Gakuin blog post, designed to highlight particular unique aspects of Japanese culture.

For this introductory lesson, I submit Case A: Bicycle trends, rules, and norms.
So, first off, people ride bicycles here. A lot. They ride bikes such that there are parking lots made just to house bicycles. You can find people of all kinds riding bikes, from high school students to salarymen to housewives with their children in tow.

Which leads me into my specific observation regarding Japanese bicycle culture: there is apparently very little care for safety when it comes to riding bicycles. At least in America, it seems that there is a huge focus on safety, what with bicycle lanes, helmet laws, and whatnot. Here, it is commonplace to see a housewife transporting her children in a child seat strapped onto the back wheel of a bike, weaving in and out of both foot traffic on the sidewalk and car traffic on the road. I feel like, in America, this would be highly frowned upon for being so dangerous, even with bicycle lanes being available. Just glancing at the amount of congestion on the streets and sidewalks, it seems like a death sentence to ride a bicycle. You're just bound to crash into someone/something, but it's only a matter of time until you do so. No helmets, rarely reflectors, and sometimes you'll encounter people using some kind of lighting system for night riding, but only because it's probably required by law. It's definitely unlawful to ride on the sidewalks, but interestingly, there are crosswalks designed with a bicycle lane, which assumes that bicyclists are breaking the law and riding on the sidewalk in the first place.

Bicyclists here use their bells constantly to warn people on the sidewalk in front of them to step aside, which is also prohibited by Japanese law. But again, it isn't enforced, so there's nothing done about this. I know I myself have nearly been run over a handful of times by aggressive bicyclists getting around, from salarymen heading to work to women dropping their kids off at daycare. Bicycling may be a quick way to go from A to B, but at what risk? I think it sends a message about Japanese culture; about how people are so encased in being punctual with everything they do that they can risk even their own well-being to make it somewhere on time.

So next time you find yourself on a Japanese street, might I suggest not having both earbuds in, because you really need to keep an ear out for the ever-popular BRRING BRRING of the Japanese bicycle.