And I'll post it so you can read it without a magnifying glass
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Riding a Vmax in Japan
I am currently working for 2 months in Nagoya Japan and 3 weeks ago I met a very cool Japanese biker chic in Tokyo. Very hot girl with long black hair and very tough and petite. She rides a 1985 Yamaha Vmax and has had it for 15 years. Its orange (as are all my bikes) which is very unusual for a Vmax. This weekend I met up with her again and this time she picked me up on the motorcycle about 70km from Tokyo at a place called Odawara.
First of all Im 6`4 and shes maybe a foot smaller and her feet could barely touch the ground while on the bike. Apparently, she took her test on a CB750 (see the connection already!). She gave me the Japanese one-size fits all open-faced helmet with tinted visor and I squeezed it on my large foreign head. And then we were off. A tall foreign guy in the back of what used to the Worlds most powerful motorcycle driven by a feisty petite Japanese girl –needless to say we got looks all day. She instructed me to hold her around her thin waist and I didn’t need to be asked twice
After an hour of driving (seemed like 20 mins to me) we were in Enoshima, a resort by the sea and hour from Tokyo. Roads in Japan have a foot border at each side of the road marked by a white line. Motorcycle can park almost anywhere and in Enoshima we simply parked at the side of the road within this border (as many other bikes had done). We were immediately approached by 3 guys from a motorcycle magazine (if you can understand Japanese go here – this was on their card –
www.crete.co.jp ) devoted to tandem motorcycling and we were asked to pose for photos and fill out a questionnaire.
After Enoshima we had a great drive along the sea coast and even though it was hot and humid in town it was cool and refreshing while driving. Lots of motorcycles out and there are loads of bike shops everywhere Ive been so far. Mopeds are very popular with everyone especially the 15-16 years old crowd. Splitting lanes is legal in Japan and everyone does it. Yuri was an expert and reminded me of myself in Britain (London/Glasgow etc). We would slide into impossibly tight spaces in stationery and moving traffic and Im amazed we didn’t hit any mirrors! We drove to Kamakura and parked on the road (in the border) on the main road despite all the traffic there was – very cool.
Later on when we left the traffic coming out of the town was very heavy and hardly moving. At one point Yuri was overtaking the line of stationery cars by driving in the opposite side of the road and then she would switch to driving on the inside of the cars, avoiding pedestrians (there are no proper sidewalks in this town just the border at the side of the road). At one point we and about 10 mopeds were cutting up the inside of the stopped traffic and we came to a bunch of oncoming schoolgirls -they had to press back against the wall to let all these bikes/mopeds move on by…never seen this before!
Next stop was Chinatown in Yokohama and we parked in the waterfront park just at the entrance – as I said you can park anywhere! After dinner in Chinatown (special soba noodles) it was a fast Tokyo speed ride back to Chiba (just outside Tokyo) – this was on the highway and Yuri sped past most cars and the Tokyo skyline was a blur to me as I hung onto her hoping that I wouldn’t fall of – crossing the very tall and long bridges was very cool. And her cornering once we got of the highway was steep and tight and the bike held up great! What a great experience and this is really what I had been looking for in Japan!
