Bike Repairs, This Time With No Carbs

So... I had a dandy little fix for my shifter lever. Then I snagged my judo bag* on it and popped it back off again. Unfortunately, I lost a very small piece of plastic that triggers a lever which releases a spring which brings my bike up a gear.
*The Cathy bag, in case anybody's wondering.
Naturally, I replaced it with something similar to plastic: a dry noodle. I took a soumen noodle I found in my cupboard and broke four small pieces of roughly equal length off of it, then taped them together.

Then I did it again, this time being careful not to snap the noodle by taping too vigorously. At left is the second one that didn't break. I cut it apart so you could see I could stack them and make that super-cool picture.

So... as it turns out, 80%, 15C thermal cycling, and a few heavy rains turn a noodle into a wet noodle. Normally, you don't care when that kind of thing happens, but you don't normally include noodles in bike repairs, either.

To illustrate - and because I was bored in Photoshop a few days ago - I took a few additional pictures.
If you were to look at figure A, you'd see an arrow pointing to the hole where one end of the noodle was glued. You'd also see a bunch of suspiciously mold-resembling spots that are little bits of superglue. I don't know how it did that, but that's what it is.

If you were to look at figure B, you'd see what the noodle-repair looked like in one piece.

If you were to look at figure C, you'd see why it is that it doesn't make for a great replacement for a piece of plastic.

At that's the story of how I fixed my bike with a noodle. The end.

Ish.

Yesterday, while I was talking with Yanavy, I cut a part of a spoon to size and I'm going to try that next. It's actually made of plastic, so I have high hopes for it. I've left it inside for a day to cure, and I had planned on putting the assembly back on my bike tonight, but I don't want to try and explain to the manager tomorrow morning why I'm riding my bike out the front door. I'll probably put it on tomorrow night as a break from studying for my doom kanji test.

「紅葉」 or "It's fall. The trees are dying. Yay."

The Japanese celebrate the changing seasons like... well, like the Japanese celebrate the changing of the seasons. Partly, I think it's an excuse to party and generally make merry and, more importantly, imbibe some final alcohol before it's too damned cold to go buy beer. In any case, trees changing color is a Big Deal here. Photographers come out in troves, and festivals are had all around the city on every other day. If you imagine Leavenworth, but with 1.5 million people living in it, you have the right idea.

Anyway, I'm here, so I have to take pictures of the trees going into a coma or people look at me funny - er, funnier? I don't know.

Fine, it's an excuse to take pictures. Here's what I got today, whatever the reason.

This (above) was a place that looked nice and was on the way, so I stopped to take some test shots. It started raining just as I was finishing up, so I hurried to get packed up and move on.

Totally random trees. I photoshopped this one pretty hard, and I'm not so great with Photoshop, so there are quite a few artifacts, but if you look at it like this, it looks good enough.

Don't worry, I don't intend to put all the pictures up in this massively space-consuming fashion, but I spent a long time between taking these four and doing the post work, so they're getting the annoying treatment.

Random bridge where I took advantage of my waterproof boots to tromp around in a shallow river that runs through town and get this picture. Boots, boots. I didn't like the view from on the bridge is why, in case you're wondering.
I'm kind of kicking myself for not getting the left-side pillar, but it looks really weird if I crop out the right-side one, so...

This is one of places we've done parties, and it was my goal for heading out to the middle of nowhere. I saw some friends boating along, so I photosniped them and headed to where I thought they were going and helped pull them ashore and got to show off my super-cool waterproof boots. Muahaha. Danner boots: Mmm, mmm, good! No, seriously!

And now is time for yet another picture spam.
Really, there's not that much to be said for momiji ("crimson leaves") 'cause I think almost everyone in a temperate climate knows what fall looks like.
Random flower picture, because it was required. It's a shibazakura, which means someone thinks it looks like a cherry blossom. Kind of.

(Far left) Probably the prettiest single tree I saw, and it was a Japanese maple, which my mom seems to have some kind of fetish for, so, again, required.

Some more pictures taken while tromping around in the river. Dunno what the weed-ish things at the bottom arm, but they looked kind of wheat-y. The far right tree looks... like I need to leave the 9th grade.

Still tromping around in the not-quite-a-river, I found this random fish and about six of his buddies. I wasn't sure it was a real dead fish until I poked it with my shoe. It felt real enough. And no, I don't know why someone would scatter fake dead fish around. It's Japan; you never know.

Mun, the guy at the paddles, finally squinted at me in recognition, so I gave myself up and waved at them. They went and bought some random sweet wine and passed it around.
Some more people came, and we took a bunch of pictures, and my tripod got passed around like...

In any case, I need new similes.

Mundane Bike Repairs

My poor, poor bike brakes have been getting worse and worse of late. A few weeks ago, some an old woman in a in a tiny car passed me, swerved in front of me, then stopped suddenly so she could s-l-o-w-l-y turn into the parking lot. I had a garbage truck approaching on my right, and a curb that I was at too shallow of an angle at to jump onto, and you can't safely stop even a bike with good brakes in three feet, but you can at least slow down the impact.

I was fine and only left a trail of tire-smudge across her bright white back bumper. She was almost kind enough to roll down her window and ask if I was okay, but not quite.

Anyway, after ten or so trips up near Kinkaku and back, plus my two-three times daily commute to the school and back, my poor V-brakes were not so much braking anymore as much as slowing. More useful than a kick in the pants, but not nearly as useful as working brakes.

The mechanic was a little confused about why I wanted my old brakes, but I managed to wrest them away from him and flee. Anyway, you can see them at right.

Learned today that the mechanic that usually does work on my bike worked for five years as a racing pit mechanic and spent most of his life working for Nissan as an engineer. Can't remember his name, though.

Bike Repair

I don't know why I have such poor luck with bikes here in Japan. I've had a brake failure on a used bike, fixed that, and that bike got stolen - $120 total expenditure for the first bike. I bought a new bike for $250 with some metal pedals ($20) because they slip less and I just destroy the plastic ones. Too fat, I guess. Then that bike was stolen - $280 total expenditure for the second bike, bringing me and those I leech off of (ie, parents) up to $390. $125 of this was refunded as insurance, fortunately, for a new total of $255.

I'm currently on my third bike ($250), but I'm using two locks now ($12 for the extra lock - one comes standard on almost all bikes) and have the normal plastic pedals. All is well with this bike, until someone got a little overzealous trying to park their bike and managed to snap off the upshifting lever. Kind of them, I know.

At right is the part that was broken off. I was fortunate enough that it happened to fall on the ground in a gutter, so nobody stepped on it or anything. I stuffed it in my pocket and headed home. At left is what remains of the shift lever that is attached to the bike.

A few days later, I took it into a bike shop and asked them what it would cost to fix. They said they'd have to replace the whole unit, which, after some runaround, turned out would be $60. I think $5 of that was labor, in case you're wondering.

I'm not upscale enough to make this kind of repair worth $60, nearly 1/4 the original cost of the bike, worthwhile to me. But you know what is?

A $3 tube of superglue and some duct tape. Yeah, classy. I know.

So I dabbed some superglue on a few contact points and fixed the whole thing in place with duct tape, then let it set for about two hours.

It seemed pretty secure at that point, so I turned the whole thing on its side and filled everything that didn't look like a moving part with superglue. Then the duct tape again. My bike is back outside, nursing its wounds, but I can now shift up again. It's not a Knife Man Dan level of glue-ninja, but it holds the thing on.

Total cost of materials:
$4 - Scotch-brand superglue
$3 - クリームパン等 - Tasties
$20 - Incidental costs in visiting a hardware store. IE, "Look, gloves!" and "A non-slip pad! I can freem that on the bottom of my DDR mats and make for bonus goodness!" and... Well, you know. I bought a six-pack of chopsticks, for some unknown reason, and almost spent $10 on glow tape.

I very nearly bought this flashlight, as well, and I think most of you can understand why. It's 5W, making it nearly three times as powerful as my current 1W belt-carry. The thing looks so nice and Mag-Lite-ish, too, as you can hopefully see through the cellophane wrap. I may buy myself that for Christmas if I have money left...

As a last random picture, I also found these hammers. They completely outnumbered what I consider to be normal hammers. Out of frame is a massive wooden mallet, various sizes of crowbars ranging from six inches to 3.2 feet, and a Japanese couple running away from the gaijin with the 1-meter crowbar in his hands.

Left Behind

I left some camera gear back at the party last night, which is 4.2 miles (6.7km) ( away, according to Google Maps, on the route we take. Multiply that by two for 8.4 miles (13.4km) round trip and it's a great way to start the day!

I'm kidding, in case that's not obvious. Bleh.

On the bright side, I found a place that has even betterdango than the soba place I've mentioned. Same price, slightly smaller amount, but they know how to cook them perfectly and you can buy as many as you want instead of just plates of three.

Oh, and I found not only my missing camera bits, but a friend's lens cap. Bonus.

It's a... Good... Too Good... Day?

Today has gone scarily well. I'm not kidding.

To start with, I woke up early. That's a good thing, by the way.

Then, I made breakfast and it just, you know, worked. It was delicious, the texture was nice, and it actually looked appealing. The seasoning worked well, and all the flavors blended nicely. Rare indeed for my cooking.

Did I mention that my school has the day off due to some freaky PE festival that we don't have to go to? I should mention that. It means I basically get my very own holiday, but without the crowds that ruin holidays here.

Next, I was helping Jes get some stuff set up on her computer, so she was actually talking to me. Problems that popped up promptly vanished for no known reason and without us really doing anything. I had solutions for most of them, but it was really nice to be overprepared for once.

So then I start reading about some DIY stuff and I'm in a particularly good mood from talking to Jes, so I exercise a little, grab a shower, and head down to the mall. Well, I went to the cycle shop I go to all the time, and he was more than happy to give me an old bike tube. In fact, he asked "Are you sure you only want one?" and we chatted for a few minutes. On my way out, I filled up my front bike tire, so the rest of the time riding around was extra comfy and easy.

So I deposit the tube at my bike and go into the mall to get some tasty treats. Because no trip to the mall is complete without tasty treats, right? Right! I ask for one tsubuan, which is kind of a shorthand way of saying that I want a two pieces of mochi (gelatinized rice) wrapped around a filling of tsubuan (red bean paste with a little bean texture left) and fried. When I tried to give her money to pay for it, she refused and said. "That's not necessary, you come here all the time. Go on, now." I checked once more and thanked her, happily on my way.

A few feet away is another shop that sells a different kind of mochi and I tried a new flavor of mochi that I honestly have no clue what it was supposed to be. That store always has issues with spelling, but even I can't figure out what flavor "Seeqester" is. It was frozen, so I couldn't eat it right away. Eh.

I head down to the hardware store to get some majikku teepu ("Velcro"). It's kind of pricey at $4.50 for a matched set of hook and loop sides that are each about 2"x3". I found it in bulk and asked someone who works there to help me figure out how much would cost how much. As it turned out, I was able to get about twice as much for two-thirds the cost that way, and it was the perfect size for what I wanted it for.
To top it off, I found some non-slip pads that I've been looking for and some glue that together were less than $2, so I have a second project for a little later. All told, I got out of there for less than $5.
How cool is that?

So I'm on my way home and I discover a new bakery that has pretty much just the stuff I like, and a bunch of new things I've never seen before - "leaf pie", for example, is some kind of thin strudel-like thing sprinkled with sugar in the shape of a piece of pizza. On top of that, they're all really, really cheap. Most bakeries here charge between $1.30 and $2.50 for their various bits. The most expensive thing I saw here was a new kind of fluffy クリームパン kuriimu pan ("delicious") and that was $1.16, which I of course bought. It was extra delicious.

So I'm about to get started on my little project. Here's what I got on my outing, minus the food, which I kind of... consumed.
The reason that today is scarily good is because things going this smoothly makes me worry about what's going to happen tomorrow.

But... I can't do anything about that, so on to hacking together some pieces!

Some Bikery

I wandered towards northern Kyoto on my bike today with Bryden. We found a park I fully intend to visit later with my D80, and a few hundred preschoolers to dodge. I tried to ask one of them if there was anything at the top of the hill we were on, but they kind of looked at me like "What's that? Is that a person?"
Beyond the staring, they didn't respond. They watched us until we were out of sight, though. Kind of creepy, all in all.

On the bright side, today was a very nice day for a bit of bike riding, though I ended up using a bandanna to keep the sweat out of my eyes, the exercise felt good. Ten kilometers on a bike isn't much for most people, I'm sure, but it was a nice way to spend a few hours. Cut me some slack, there are hills and we ate lunch.

I'm planning to run a similar path tomorrow, and I'll bring my camera with me, so maybe I'll have something for you next time.

New Bike

Yay, a new bike! It's the same as my previous bike, but the guy who calibrated everything wasn't quite as skilled, so it's not quite as nice as before. Also, after having ridden a number of times every day, I haven't been on a bike in a three weeks, so riding feels a little weird.

Between the calibration and the three weeks, I'm pretty awkward on it. I don't think the guy filled the tires up enough, either. But, it's a bike, and it means I can get around again. Yay!

Another $300 down, though, between the bike ($250), registration, a second lock, and lunch while I was waiting for them to get it ready to go. That puts me with $100 for this month, and $50 of that should go to my 'Net connection, if they ever actually charge me for it.

Non-Helmet Society, and Life is Like a Box of Chocolates

I'm not sure why I haven't mentioned this before, but it's definitely something that bears it.

You do not wear a helmet when riding a bicycle in Japan. I'm not saying "It's even dorkier here than in the States." I'm saying you just don't. When I got here, I looked for one, but I could only find them in kids' sizes. I've looked in a number of different cycle shops, and I have not a seen a single adult-sized bicycle helmet.

Now, I know they exist somewhere. While hiking, we saw two sets of three mountain bikers who were all wearing helmets. And on two other occasions, I've seen men riding bicycles in heavy traffic with helmets, but they were the kind of guys who wear the tight cycling pants and the bright yellow spandex T-shirts. All children up to the age of about six or seven wear them, but they suddenly disappear around that time.

In some ways, I can understand the sentiment; a helmet is a big thing to lug around, even if it's light, and adds to the massive pile of crap I might otherwise be accoutered with at the moment. In addition, fashion here is much more important than I've noticed before. This could either be an expansion in my awareness of it, or an actual change, but it's hard to tell either way.
Don't worry, I still pick my clothes based on how many pockets they have and blindly mix and match colors.

Now, with all of that said, some kinds of helmets do exist here, and you see anybody on a motorcycle or scooter wearing one. Now, whether them wearing it is any help to them or not, I'll never know, since half the time the things aren't even strapped on. I have to assume enforcement of some helmet law (which I also must assume exists) is pretty strict here, which would also explain the munchkins.

I know it won't help in terms of stopping concussive impact, but I do my best to wear my hat and cycling gloves every time I go out.
It sounds stupid - because it is, I know - but I figure a new hat or pair of gloves beats reconstructive scalp surgery or permanent scarring, and will also help to keep little bits of road from getting embedded in the bits of me that jut out. Like my head. And hands.
I dunno, it makes me feel better about not wearing a helmet, though.

To temper that, I should point out that been involved in four different collisions since I got here, but none of them have been serious, and one should hardly count. Here we go:

1. With a random mother and her kid strapped in a rear rack seat. I was dodging people near the Shijo-Kamagawa bridge and she was, as well, and we dodged into each other. Fortunately, the baskets on the front of most bikes are made of a pretty pliable (and very rust-prone!) kind of metal, probably iron, and make great crumple zones. And they usually deform just a little, but it sure helps and isn't hard to fix.
   A quick "Are you okay?" from both of us and we were off.
   
2. With a guy who decided it would be a good time to go through a red "Don't cross the street right now" light. I was turning the corner and neither of us stopped, so we sort of bodychecked each other. I got a bit of a rugburn on my inner thigh, which was less than comfortable, but I think we were both okay outside of that. Quick "Okay?" from each of us and it was over.
   
3. With a car, while coming out of my apartment one day.
   Usually, when I leave, I glide downhill into the road and merge happily in, but there's a wall that prevents me from seeing to the left until I'm actually in the road. Fortunately, Japan is a drive-on-the-left country, so I can see oncoming traffic plenty early enough.
   This time, though, the guy was on the wrong side of the road and only inches from the retaining wall. Combine that with the fact that I was turning left this time, and stupidly didn't stop to check left, neither of us could have known about the other due to the wall. Fortunately, I just barely heard his engine noise and was able to slam on my brakes. He hit his brakes, too, but too late and slammed into my front tire. Fortunately, it turns.
   I don't know if this is normal, but our conversation went like this:
   Car-Man and I simultaneously: "Excuse me!"
   Car-Man: "Are you alright?"
   Me: I glance at myself, look at the bike tire. "Yeah, I'm okay. ... Well..."
   And we head off.
4. This was just yesterday, on my way back from getting fried rice cakes filled with course red bean paste (tsubuan yakimochi). I saw the train going overhead and tried to get out from under the overpass before it got there. There was a junior high school kid coming the other direction and we both tried to go to my left to go around each other. If hadn't been rushing, it would've been fine, but I was, so neither of us had enough time to negotiate. We both hit our brakes and I came to a stop with my foot on his front tire. My 90kg (~200 pounds) is plenty to stop a small Japanese kid of probably 1/3 the weight, it would seem.

And that's about all I have to say about that.

Bike Brake Redux

I forgot to mention it, but it would appear the fix to my rear brake was only a temporary one. It still starts to drag, and if I go a long way without stopping to let the brake cool down, it squeaks pretty loud, in addition to the whole pedaling-through-molasses thing. All in all, not particularly pleasant.

In the end, I'm still looking for a new bike, but it's not really urgent, because this one still goes forward. My plan is just to keep my eyes and ears open for a good deal on something like what I'm looking for.

Surprisingly Cheap

I went down to the bike shop at the mall to see how much it would cost to have the brakes fixed. The conversation went something like this:
"Excuse me."
"Yes?"
"My rear brake is always about halfway brake... ing..."
"Hm." The bike shop guy pokes at the break, walks inside, grabs a small wrench and screwdriver, makes a couple of adjustments. "Yosh." He proceeds to spin the wheel to demonstrate that it's fixed.
"How much to fix that?"
"No, it's fine."
"Really?"
"Yeah, thanks for coming."
"Thank you very much."

Then I went and bought a donut.

Unforseen Bicycle?

I went out to a bar called The Pig and Whistle today with a friend from club. It's described as a British pub, so I had hopes their fish and chips would be decent. They were actually pretty good. My chicken and chips was pretty good as well, and the dressing on the salad was the perfect amount, which I thought was pretty cool. We ended up spending about two hours there, and had some pretty good conversation.
I'm getting in the habit of using a lot of diagrams. I drew, to scale, the US, four different cartridges (.22LR, .223, 12G, and .45), and made an attempt at Portugal. And between my friend and I, we sketched out a unit circle and poked fun of my math.
By the way: KMD, you make for a great topic. I've talked for hours about my crazy American friend with twenty guns and a box of assorted knify bits.

Anyway, the bike, which is the subject.

[Edit: I seem to have forgotten to mention that a new bike, from a bike shop, will cost between $120 and $200. Probably towards the upper part of that range, since I want a bike with more than one gear.]
[A second edit: I should also mention that while Kyoto has a very usable mass transit system, it's small enough that I can get anywhere on my bike just about as fast, and while getting exercise, and it's free. I was just doing some math, and if I go downtown once a week for the remaining time I'm here - and I am much more likely to go two to three times a week - it would end up at about $120, assuming I never use the buses, which are much more expensive. This is why the "walk, you bum!" option isn't really.]

As it would turn out, my bicycle's rear brake chose today to decide that it would get stuck half engaged. Today, I went 6 miles (8.4km) - not a long way, right? - with the rear brake half engaged.
I thought I was just being particularly out of shape at first, and then it started to squeak more and I realized what the problem was. I tried poking at it, but this is Japan, so I can't carry my Leatherman with me. I kicked it a couple of times for good measure, and generally pried at it with my flashlight, but to no avail.

I poked at it anyway on a couple of different occasions. On the way back, it was extra sludgy, though not as squeaky, so I did my best to go at a decent speed in spite of it. I stopped at one point in hopes of getting a picture of some policemen, but they said they can't do that while they're working. When I got back on, I felt the brake assembly, and it was a touch under 100 Fahrenheit after two to three minutes of cooling in humid air.

I'm going to try and disconnect the brake so I can use my bike tomorrow morning, but I think I'm going to see about buying a new bike either this weekend or tomorrow afternoon. What I'm thinking is that this bike cost me about $60 with the registration and whatnot. Having the tires replaced would cost about $30, and that needs to be done anyway, 'cause they only hold a safe amount of air for about three days. After that, the tires slide sideways on slight slopes. So, $30 there.
I have no idea how much it would cost to have the rear brake fixed, but I can't identify anything wrong with it, and I can't imagine it will cost any less than having the tires replaced. So, figure another $20-30 for that. We're up to at least $50.

The light on my bike won't engage when the tires are wet, which is exactly the kind of situation where I want cars and other cyclists to know I'm there. Those are about $15, plus an unknown installation fee, though I could probably do that myself. About $65, so we've now exceeded the original purchase cost of my bike.
To add to this, there are no reflectors on the wheels, and only a small one on the back and just the light on the front, so I'm nearly invisible at night. Good situation, right?

Then we can get into things that aren't actually broken, but are merely inconvenient. This is my first bike of this sort, so I'm looking at it much like my FZ8: a learning experience to grow from.

• Height: It's a small bike, even for a Japanese person, which I am not. The seat does not go nearly high enough to make for a proper ride.
• Gears: This bike has one gear: "Go." Seriously, it has just one gear. This is fine as long as you want to go roughly ten miles an hour and never encounter a slope, but it's not so great if you're trying to not get run down by cars doing 30km/h.
• Racks: The basket on this bike is small, and it's rounded, so a lot of things just don't fit into it. Oh, and the paint burnt off where someone tossed a cigarette into it, for some reason, so it's going t
  The back rack is the same as just about every other one, though, so no complaints there
• Form: If I wore an ankle-length skirt, this would be a great bike in terms of form. But I don't. I wear pants. And the traditional triangle shape is traditional for a reason: it's strong. The wobbly curves of this bike are scary if you put any more than about twenty pounds on the two racks.
• Even when the rear brake does engage properly, it still doesn't effectively slow me down, it more just makes a loud squawk and tells people that I'm there. This has it's uses, but I'd prefer that it didn't do that. I'll be avoiding a rear drum brake if possible.
  

I will totally take the pedals off, though, and have them put them on the new bike, when and if I do buy a new one. That should only cost about $5, and then I get to keep my $20 pedal investment. As it is, this bike has too many things wrong with it for me to feel safe riding it, let alone comfortable. But these are things I would never have considered before I bought it, and now maybe some of you will have been able to learn from this, as well. Most of this has been bother me for a while, but the whole brake thing makes it effectively unridable. I can walk next to it with less effort and at the same speed.
I'll make sure to post a picture once it's gone, if I can't fix it, since I haven't put a picture of it up as yet.

[eloquent segue]

Like I said, I'm looking at this bike as a learning experience; it cost me, but now I know much more clearly what I do and do not want in a bicycle. Hopefully I can sell it back to a cycle shop for $20 or something, and they can fix it in-house and resell it at the same $50 price or something.

Input would be appreciated.

Spendy... Pedals?

Once again, I've killed the pedals on my bike. I seem to perpetually be having this problem, but other people who are heavier than me don't seem, so it seems kind of weird. Maybe I don't actually know how to ride a bicycle? Whatever it is, the pedals on my bike were coming apart. I managed to get another week or so out of them by way of about ten zip strips, but they were still slowly getting worse, despite my best dollar-store efforts.
So, I went to the cycle shop and did it right. As it turns out, they sell some pedals that look and feel to be cast from iron. At $17, they're nearly twice as much as the other, plastic, pedals, but they should last a little longer, I figure. Spent another $5 on having them change the pedals for me*.
Cool thing is that they also oiled my bike lock, pumped up the tire, and... something else I can't remember. Definitely worth the $5, I think.
Between this and the burger I had while I was waiting, I spent $25 getting new pedals for my bike, which is half of what I spent on it in the first place.

*I tried to remove the pedals earlier this week, just to see how difficult it would be. To do this, I borrowed the 管理人's (manager's) crescent wrenches, found one that worked, and... completely failed to get the pedal nut to move. We grabbed another wrench and beat on it for a while, and we tried having him steady the pedals and bike while I put my weight down on the wrench... Nothing.

Before you say anything: yes, I am fully aware that pedals are reverse-threaded. Yes, I was fully aware of that when I was trying to take the pedals off.

Bike Tire

I was sad to discover on Friday evening that my bike's rear tire had apparently been punctured by something. I talked to the 管理人 to see where I should go to get a new tube or to have it fixed and he said that any cycle shop would do it for around $15, but that he'd be happy to do it for $5 for any of the tenants.
So, my tire's all fixed and good to go, and I didn't have to muck around with trying to get the tire on and off. Sweet deal, I think.

Instead... Bi-eek.

I've spent today's blog time going through the comments for some of the other posts and replying to them. Sorry to take so long!
That said, I still have a little feeling in my butt...

I mentioned I wanted to get a bike and had been looking at a green one ($168). I didn't end up buying that one and ended up getting el cheapo discount used bike ($60) instead. Since almost all of you are American, you'll know the same thing I do: it's secretly a girl's bike. They don't make men's bikes here, though. Still, the bike I got is pretty... bleh. It's kind of a dark grey (+), has one gear (-), a light (+) that is aimed sideways (-) and is dim (-), a springy seat (+) but no shocks (-), a basket (+), a back-mounted rack-thing (+), water-guard things (+) that refuse to call fenders (++), and a pretty cool lock (+). There's a lot of rounding error on those, so don't bother counting 'em out. Also, the brakes blow. They are both loud and fail at braking. Never get a bike with a drum brake. Most useless POS ever.

Oh, I went back to the shrine with Bethany and Sara. It was nice to be able to take pictures with both hands this time. No jokes, please.

Egg'd

I made breakfast this morning and was waiting for it to cool to an edible temperature when I noticed I had left my camera out from trying to get pictures earlier. So here’s what I eat in the morning.

I’m thinking I’ll do eggs or something to go with the rice every other day or so, and just do plain rice on the off days. Keep in mind that when I eat rice on its own, I add soy sauce and green onions, so it’s not just sad, lonely rice. The eggs pictured have a little pepper in them, but this was a very low-sodium breakfast, and the taste certainly attested to it. I figured I’d give un-soy’d and unsalted food a shot.

I have my placement test today. I don’t think I’m going to do well. Ms. Aika KUMADA warned us that some people wouldn’t be able to answer a single question, and I there’s either a one- or two-year (I don’t recall which) language prerequisite for this program.

Also, I was going to buy a bike yesterday for ￥16,800, but Bethany told me about a bike shop by the school that I had forgotten about. I didn’t know they had bikes there available for as little as ￥5,000, so I’m going to hit that place up on the way. I may still buy a bike from the place in the mall for more, but that’s $110 difference. I’m wary, though, ‘cause the last bike I bought for cheap had pieces falling off within two months. I’m sure some of remember my green bike of no pedals, a non-working rear brake, and soforth.

It will be helpful for this next section if you know that converting JPY yen to USD dollars is approximately done by covering the last two zeroes and ignoring commas. Thus ￥1,000 becomes $10. Easy.

Bikes here have more gadgets than American bikes. They also all look like they’re from the 1950’s or something. Very, very few bikes don’t have a basket, mud guards, a headlight, a platform over the rear wheel, and a built in lock under the seat that locks said wheel. The bike I was looking at has a light that’s powered by a magnet and uses an LED instead of an incandescent bulb. From what I’m told, the little cog that powers the light on most bikes rubs the tire down pretty quickly. It also uses a drum brake on the rear wheel instead of V brakes (the ones that crimp down on both sides) on both, though it still uses those on the front tire, along with a spring that prevents you from applying too much braking to the front tire. I think it’s called the “Shimano power modulator”. I haven’t seen diagrams, but I suspect it’s basically a spring in a can the size of パリパリチーズ (if you don’t know, don’t ask: it’s weird).

This brings me to my next topic: helpfulness of Japanese employees. I was talking this old man that works in the bike shop by the mall and, in addition to answering questions (my questions, by the way, are phrased in very broken Japanese, which means it gets complemented by about three people a day) for more than fifteen minutes, actually recommended that I go to the other bike shop because they have more bikes.

Bizarrely enough, they wanted my address to buy a bike. I was hoping it would go like this:

Will:このみどりの自転車をお願いします。
(I’d like this green bike.)

Clerk: はい。十六千八百円です。。。はい、二万円をいたいています。四十千円をおかりします。
(Yes, that is $160. I’m receiving $200. Your change is $40.)

Will [to the old man]: いろいろなことにどうもありがとうございました。
(Thank you very much for your help.)

Will: [exit stage, front door, with bike]

But this is Japan, so there’s paperwork to fill out. Doubtless they want to know how many people I’ve killed in the last month, whether or not I’ve been abusing drugs too frequently, whether I’ve had a measles shot in the past ten years, and what my first girlfriend’s cat’s favorite food was, along with a second set of paperwork to file if you’ve never had a girlfriend, and further paperwork if your non-girlfriend didn’t have a cat, or if he didn’t like to eat anything at all.

I hate paperwork.

Anyway, I really should be studying for the placement test. Not practicing kanji for the past four months is going to have hurt me quite a bit, I suspect.

Included is Bethany posing while making yakisoba and the girls camping the kitchen while making said yakisoba.