Still More Freaky Marketing from Japan

A while ago I wrote about cigarette marketing in Japan and the irony of brand names like "Black Impact", "Infinity" and "Hope". The "cool but hard and manly" smokes are funny, but I was just looking down at the counter a minute ago in the konbini* when I saw the pretty pink Virginia Surimu package there (with a free sequin lighter pouch!) and thought...looks like a tini box of tampons... and was searching for the ad to make fun of them here and found this anti-smoking ad which I thought was wonderful. "You've come a long way baby; just not as far as me." Awesome.

*Kombini = Japanglish for Convenient Store. convenient→conveni→kombini

More Funny Marketing from Japan

The ad reads "For the active and stylish body. Active Venus Miwa." The "Active Venus" they are referring to in the Aquarius Zero sports drink ad, is Miwa Asao, "Beach Volley" player. Apparently drinking this stuff will turn you into an animated ELF with big, round boobies*! Which is good for Miwa, because she wished she had a chest like that.

*Great. Now our blog will be 159,001 of the possible choices when Googling "Big, round elf boobs".


Aquarius Pro is the macho male sports drink that just teamed up with Adidas to give you the "Recovery Shot" that you need! In a country where brand names are everything, I am only surprised that they didn't make a drink with the Adidas name on it sooner. It tastes like acerola fruit which I like, but the packaging is still silly. I find it bizarre that they can actually claim that it has 9kcal per 100ml of ENERGY in each bottle. That is fucking amazing!!! How many bottles do I need to power my motorcycle you think? On the website there is info on how to "properly consume" this product, but since you cannot read Japanese you are FUCKED right? Not with me here to translate! The steps are 1. Exercise 2. Rest 3. Consume. So there you go.
Other info on the site tells you how the soy peptides and amino acids in the drink are broken down by your body. Do they really expect anybody but bloggers like meto read this shit?

Mid-size CBs...Repost with new pics

A couple weeks ago I saw this '69 CB450 on another website and just posted it here saying "I want this...with a 1000cc engine." I just bumped into it again on the Flickr page of the guy who restored it for $. I liked it so much I decided to post the other 2 pics. Kinda like when ya already had a poster of yer favorite nudie girl, but found one of her posing doggie style, you know.

The guy who did this seems to love old Hondas just like me, except he probably has more wrenching skills, and definitely has a better paint shop than I did when I was resurrecting bikes.
The other pic here is black, 1968 CB450K. These would make me miss my old 1969 CL450...if it weren't for the fact that that bike was a cantankerous bitch... no, for me these are just lovely works of art. I wouldn't want to ride anything under 600cc's. But these got the looks tho enit?

A new house for us.....I hope.

Well, we did it! Made an offer on this house in Henderson NV. It is out-there! I mean 30 miles and over a 1/2 hour from the Las Vegas strip. It has a cool view of the City of las vegas in the distance though, and is in very good shape.....not like most of the forclosures in town. It has a rare 1/3 of an acre lot in an area with other big lots...(but it has no landscaping at all), with a small 1700 sq-foot house smack in the middle.
Our commute is not going to be great, but it has quick access to the freeway only a couple miles away. It is located in a "equestrian area" Meaning there is a Huge city run horse park a couple blocks away, it is very quiet! With owls hooting and birds chirping-(a big differience from the planes shaking the windows, and cars going by, living right next to a Mclarian international airport as we do).
Only blocks away there are bike and horse trails going all over the mountians and to lake las Vegas and Lake Mead....also it has close access to powerline trails and mountian roads I can ride the bikes on only a few blocks the other way.
It is very "country", and for around here, it has 4 times more land than 99.9% of the homes in Vegas. (we got tired of looking at houses with your neighbors actual house, is used as a fence for your side-house-access-non-yard!) iT IS THE CHEEPIEST HOUSE IN THE HOOD, meaning our neighbors are RICH....to some degree....

We will know if our offer is accepted in a week but...WE BID till it HURT! I mean, more than there FUCKING asking price....and I am hoping BIG TIME we will get it.

I think it will be fun to land scape, build a shop or a pool, ad-on to the house, and all those other things you can do with space and property!

here is a link to the hood with a interactive map you can zoom around with.

Izu Peninsula in the Rain

Yamabiko-so is the name of an old school house converted into a rather rough, bed-n-breakfast type place that is located on the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture. Splendor has gone there every April for at least 15 years, probably closer to 20. I did Yamabiko 2 years ago and had a large helping of motorcycle drama. This weekend is the Yamabiko ride.

This year the club leader decided to move the Yamabiko ride to March. With me being in the po' house it was looking like I wasn't going to make it anyway, but moving the ride from April to March cinched it. Why in hell did the ride get moved to March when it is still cold? Dunno...but last year was canceled outright because a small group of guys that quit Splendor due to "issues", decided to make their own Izu ride on the very same weekend as the main Splendor event, and camped just down the road from where Splendor stays. Doing that 2 years in a row is pretty fuckin' relentless and childish.

So anyway, this year instead of maybe riding in the cold rain of April, Splendor is assured to ride in the cold rain of March. In Osaka, it was super windy all night, so this morning I checked the weather report for Yamabiko -- says it is 46F/8C and raining with 32mph winds. That just suuuuucks. Hope they are having fun anyway. Coming back to Osaka from Yamabiko takes me across a long section of bridges along the coastline in Aichi Prefecture, which is always windy and makes me feel like I am going to fall over. Today would have been one of those "fingernails diggin into the handlegrips" rides no doubts. This is the first time that I felt glad I am not touring with the guys, even though it would have been good to see them all.... and maybe even get a chance to ride Owen's bike!

My buddy Owen (the other pipe smoker in the photo up top) is at Yamabiko this weekend with his HD in its newest incarnation (pic at left). Nice change from what it looked like b4 (right).

So good luck with the weather guys! Hope to do the 1000 mile ride in June...but that one is always the most expensive so....maaayyybe ...I will think about it.

Herajika the Spatula Deer.

After over 20 years of trying to master this language, and 7 years of living here...I finally found out that moose are called "Herajika" in Japanese not 10 minutes ago. Any Japanese I am acquainted with either say "Muusu" or don't know what they are. My wife and her mom have been to Alaska many times and so they always say "Moose" too.

According to my buddy Owen, the name comes from a combination of the word for spatula, which is "hera" and the word for deer, which is "shika". So what we got chere, is yer garden variety spatula-deer.

I have often joked that moose must be called "uma-jika" in Japanese, or "horse-deer" -- which when written in Japanese actually reads "baka" or "idiot". So whose the idiot now, spatula deer?

"Gaijin Bash" & "Ramen Adventures"

Coooool. Just found 2 blogs about Japan written by a fellow rider over here. "Gaijin Bash" & "Ramen Adventures". In all honesty, I was actually looking for some fellow rider types in my area to do some touring with when my Google search for "Motorcycle touring Kansai" dropped me into a bowl of this fella Brian's ramen...blog. I guess I hit his page because he is a motorcycle rider and the word "Kansai" was written somewhere in his blog.

Brian hooked me up with a couple fun links too. One was for his ride in Hokkaido -- the northern-most island of Japan. Lots of people here call Hokkaido the "Riders Paradise" but it is really quite far north so I have yet to go.

The guy's photographic eye is right-on and I like that he uses words like FUCK and DUDE without shame. Fun writing style is and good pics is probably how his blog got picked as 1 of the top 10 blogs about Japan. Check it out!

Japanese Lesson (and rambling commentary)

Oftentimes Japanese terms pop up in my blog.
For those of you who are not aware, Kansai is the western region of Japan where I live, and encompasses Kyoto, Hyogo, Osaka, Nara, Mie as well as Shiga and Wakayama. Just soes ya know.

Also, the word "Gaijin" means "foreigner", but most often people use it when referring to foreigners aside from other Asians -- most especially whitey. Personally I dislike the word since I prefer to stand out because I am legitimately odd; not because I am white. It is a term that separates "us and them", but usage is mixed between "Gaijin scare me" and "Gaijin are so fun, I love them". There is generally no hatred attached to the word, but this is a country that considers itself a "1 race culture", and we are "them".

Never tell'm it's a BMW!

IF YOU LIVE IN JAPAN, NEVER SAY YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A FOREIGN BIKE PART! Never tell them. The moment you say "BMW" everybody at the auto parts store starts running in circles, waving their hands in the air and screaming like it's the apocalypse.

Last season, my battery was in a coma and I priced checked around town, and the prices nearly sent me into a coma myself. So I paid 2000yen ($20) to get it charged and used it till...I was remiss in riding the bike this winter and it finally died. Meaning...cannot be charged.

Price check on aisle 2!!! The cheapest motorcycle battery here is around $150, and if it is for a BM'r? "Fugedaboudit" as the mob guys say. So, I finally figured out that the name on my battery, "Yellow Hat" is not the brand name but a STORE name. (Like I would know...Japan has a motorcycle brand name called "Yellow Corn" for crissakes). So I called Yellow Hat and they said "We don't sell motorcycle batteries" so I told the guy the number on my battery. He said "Oh! That is our smallest CAR battery. It sells for $75." YES!!!

So CAR batteries are half the price of motorcycle batteries. Ok.

I still need to order it, and the closest Yellow Hat is an hour train ride, and 15min. walk from the station. But the "Maker-san" is not available on the weekends, so I will need to go during the week so Yellow Hat can call the "maker-san" and order it for me...then come back in a week to get my battery-san.

See, Japan has ways of punishing people for doing things like...not riding your bike during the winter so your battery dies. They usually discipline people with hour long train rides and long walks through unfamiliar neigborhoods

A New Love to Rescue

A friend found this in a neighbors barn in Spokane, a 18 hour drive for me. It is a 1967 Ducati Monza JR 160 cc single. I talked to the neighbor and now it is mine for a nominal price and belive it or not! it comes with paperwork!, also a promise to pick it up within a year....he said no worries on gettin it, it has been sittin for 25 years.

What it will be, cept in red and silver.
What it Is..

Now to find my garage, wife wont let me pick it up till we have a new house (which we are looking for). I have only four now, but I am a twelve bike kind of guy....soooo...looking for a new garage with the right stuff isnt freekin easy. Kinda like finding parts for this bike-, or using the Italian -fucked up mail system-!.

Tunnel of Love

To make myself feel better after hearing about my dented love machine, I puffed a bowl from the peace-pipe searched Google for some motorcycle induced solace and found this short, artsy biker flick. 10min. long, and that is about enough.

A fucking DENT??! Maaan...

Soooooooowuuah.... apparently the Suzuki Fin Bike has been DENTED. 7 years it has been sitting under one of those tent type carports with my sister's boat, and apparently during one of the big snows Seattle had, the snow became heavy enough to collapse the carport and put a dent in the tank of the Suzi. Fooooooooooock.

I didn't bother asking if it happened THIS year, but I did notice nobody bothered telling me about it until today when I said, "I really would like to make it over there this year, get the bike running and sell it to pay for my trip." That was when my sister said, "Oh, about the bike...". Niiiiice huh? If I ever fuck up anything that belongs to you guys? I will tell you that day. Promise.

I have no idea how big the dent is, but the word used was "dent" not "ding". A dent turns a sleek, black shiny custom bike into ......an old 1982 Suzuki with a fin on it. Damn.

Ty? You are the resident expert...naturally, we have no idea what kind of damage we are talking about here yet, but removing any dent from a tank means repaint right? I used a Dupont that had both pigment and clear coat mixed with it (kind of a new item at the time) so that might be good news..... but there really IS no good news when you have a bike you intended to sell, but have to fucking FIX the fucking body work before selling it for whatever low price someone would pay for a bike whose only redeeming quality is the LOOK.

Fucking Ssiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggghhhhhh. The last time I decided to sell a Suzuki was when that dizzy........pulled out in front of me and I was jettisoned through the windshield of my cop bike. I thought I fixed my bad Suzuki karma by building this bike...

Kujo, Osaka City

I swear I posted about my neighborhood before, but for the life of me I cannot find the post. I really need to do a better job of titling my blog posts...but the blog muse will forgive me I am sure.

THIS is Kujo. Kujo is in the "city-city" of Osaka; not the suburbs. Meaning, everything is concrete and their are barely any trees, and the air quality is...well there is no air quality. We are just 2 short train stops from "downtown", but I can ride my bicycle for about 20 minutes and get to a part of downtown.

Kujo is simple. The most common type of house is 3 story concrete with a shop on the first floor -- and I mean shop as in welding or machine shops. There are some really old houses here too, looks like they are held together with grime from the lovely Kujo air. I feel confidant in saying that making bolts or threaded steel rods is likely the main industry going on here. I only know of one small foundry here, but there are a crudload of plasma cutter machines cutting massive sheets of steel. There are also a LOT of prostitutes in Kujo, but that is a whoooooole 'nuther story.

Several years ago, construction began on a new train line that goes from Nara to Kobe. It just HAPPENS to change from underground to above ground 1 block from my house, and where we used to cut across the road to go shopping...is now where a mammoth shaft of glass, concrete and steel breaches the asphalt and makes its ascent up and across the river 4 blocks from us. (an awful, smelly river with fish-zombies in it no doubt). So, thanks to Hanshin Railway, I walk another 2 blocks up or down the street, to cross the road. If I go right, the train is underground; if I go left, I walk under the train line. I have taken over 40 photos and put them in a web album for you to enjoy, and I will go ahead and make comments under them, and post a SLIDESHOW here for you, free of charge! Aren't I swell?

One thing I will mention first, is that in Japan there are a LOT of small Buddhist shrines scattered around the neighborhoods. Kujo has so many, one day I just grabbed my camera and did a bit of a shring-scavenger hunt with my camera, just so I could impress upon you the sheer VOLUME of these things. To the unwary eye, they look like little Japanese nazi houses, because they all have swastikas on them. But everyone who I know understands that the swastika or "Manji" on these shrines is very ancient symbol for compassion. With that said, please enjoy the presentation, "Kujo: Why name your neighborhood after a rabid dog?"



Sorry, the order is random. To see it in the order I intended, you can visit the actual Picasa Web Album here: http://picasaweb.google.com/wiselywierd/KujoOsaka

The Road, Pals, Motorbikes and BBQ'd Livestock!

I need a local motorcycle touring posse. Spring is "close enough" for me to be thinking more and more about touring. But today, re-posting a ride from 9 years ago (buddy Sean wanted to see the pics and I was happy to oblige!) reminded me "Touring is seldom like THAT time". Don't get me wrong, I have had awesome trips over here! You saw the pics. But I would definitely like MORE and the way to ride MORE is to keep the trips CHEAP. Staying at $85 a night fancy inns or taking a $200 ferry to get to the destination has been a good experience...but I have experienced that now, and it is time to move on to

To me a GREAT touring trip is meeting 9 or 10 people -- all sorts...guys, gals, WASPs, Japs, whoever... weirdos and normalos -- on all sorts of different bikes -- expensive ones, barely running homemade ones -- and ride and ride and ride to somewhere out in nature that rules. Set up camp, cook a shit load of animal flesh, drink whatever we want, laugh our fucking asses off, and ride all day the next day. If there were a hot-spring involved, like in Japan here, that would rule too. I thought that part was odd in the beginning, but yeah, a dip in an outdoor hot spring gets the muscles ready for a whole new day of riding the next day.

Maybe I should put out an add or something... ha!

Random Jap Custom Bikes

These are the bikes that came up when I googled "Custom Japanese Bike". Top to bottom, left to right... Just a Kawi custom I thought had a cool shape. Below left, a typical boring SR400 Yamaha with a very cool alum. tank. Common custom choices made by the rider at the time of purchase, seen a bunch of these, still like the tank, still hate SRs and their weak-ass thumper 1 cyl. engine. Next! 2 bikes from the Tokyo area custom shop "Heiwa" (means Peace). Everybody NOT living in Japan thinks that the Japanese have cool fucking custom bikes...bullshit. They have them in the Tokyo area, and scattered about Japan, but I NEVER saw one custom like these in Osaka. Aftermarket SR400s and stock bikes. Don't be fooled that "Japan" means anything. It is all regional. Next! A non-Indian bike with an Indian sticker on it...TOTALLY Japanese thing to do. How many SR's have I seen with a Norton "look" with a Norton tank badge...dunno...many. Red Triumph from Heiwa also. BTW, Triumphs are all called "Tora" here, which means "Tiger". Next is a Washingtonian gal on a 70's CB550F...massive custom. Are my eyes working? Is the front tyre bigger than the back? Green AJS custom...so rare in Japan that this is an actual AJS with an AJS tank badge. I put this on because I just like that pipe going over the tranny. I like the shape and the look too, but that simple "pipe" just got me. Next...black...and very cool...weirdness. Ryan should have this, only painted with both black and RED with more evil on it. Ryan would like Ty's bike "Darth Satan" maybe. Last, a "Mo-bike". Just like this look. So did NY. A Japanese man hand made this, and 3 of em were shown in modern art museums in NY.

Battery Dead...NOT Feelin the Love.

Yup. During the winter I just started my bike sometimes and ran it for awhile at 1500rpm or a little over for a few minutes, thinking that would keep the battery good right? Wrong. So it died, and I was going to have to pay the nearby garage $20 to charge it for me...but the guy down the street who fixes bikes offered to charge it for free, said he'd call me later that night...on Saturday...it's Wednesday night now... I only see the guy in his shop once every so often...maybe a couple times a month, but I gave him my number? Plus he knows where I live and my number is on the sign on my door...(siiiiiigh) Sometimes people annoy me....no they don't, they ALWAYS find a way to annoy me. Oh well, maybe next month when I get my battery back it will have been charged...either that or it will have sat so long it will have boiled it to death. WTF.
BTW a battery for my bike costs about $200 here...chargers are $150. God I hate it here sometimes. This is not my beautiful motorcycle paradise.

...kinda bored today. Think I will install a new OS on my computer...

Nice damn Falcon!

Oooo! I LIKE this seat!
...ok, I like the rest of the bike too, but the seat is the part of my shark-fin bike that Ty made me think I should have put more thought into. You know it is odd...I thought "No no, custom seat is too hard" but yet, I fabricated and welded special mounts onto my frame to attach the seat spring to, and also did the upholstery for my saddle. ...so... sometimes I have a 1-track mind and ideas go by on the other track going the other direction. ...and hey! This bike is even a FALCON! ...my first and only cool car was a 66' Falcon.

I gotta say, I really REALLY fucking miss my old shop, all my tools and cheap, crappy bikes to wrench on. God dammit. Kids? Don't be retarded like dad and think that when you move to a another country all the things you enjoyed in the "old country" would be there for you in the new one. I need about a jillion dollars and I can have a good bike shop again.

Anyone who feels sorry for my ass as much as I do, say "aye".
...then say, "Shiver me timbers, tis been a rough journey". ...I like it when you talk like a pirate.

....what?

PS I guess lots of other people like this bike too. After I wrote this I went back to the guys FB page and noticed that this bike was featured in GQ, Playboy, Forbes Style, Men's Journal and several other mags. Normally that would REALLY turn me off, but dammit the bike is so cool I am just gonna keep likin' it.

Leadership lessons