Suburban Japan: Bicycle Wars

...and other dark secrets inside a quiet Japanese neighborhood.

Ever wondered what life in suburban Japan looks like?

A place where people buy their food in corner stores and almost no one owns a car. If you’re a young housewife with one or two children, you pile your kids on a bicycle to do your daily shopping. Office workers ride their bicycles to the local train station, but this is where things get complicated. Parking it in a bicycle lot can cost over $700 a year, so most people leave their bicycles on the street. That’s illegal, and every couple of weeks the government shows up with a flatbed truck to haul everyone’s bicycles away.

If you want it back then you have to track it down to one of twenty lots – usually under a highway overpass – and then comb through thousands of similar bicycles until you find yours. Pay the ransom and you’re free to pedal home.

Best of all, in two short weeks you get to do it all over again.

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Category: Travel