Bikes

Commuting by bike is very common in Hakodate and in Japan. Business people and students alike do it. Last night at dinner when I looked up at the TV from the tedious work of breaking tonkatsu (Fried pork cutlet) up with chopsticks, I saw a news feature about a safety program about bikes being presented to Japanese elementary school students.

The students were all seated in the gym of their school and were watching with expressions ranging from shock to boredom as stuntmen theatrically crashed bicycles into each other and went flying across the room. Lucky for the stuntmen, these staged traffic accidents also featured mats in addition to projectile tumbling.The typical Japanese commuter bike

It seems that bicycle accidents are a problem in Japan since bicycle commuting is so common. Having seen some of the multi-tasking that happens on bikes first hand, I am not surprised.

I’ve seen umbrella-carrying, texting, and umbrella-carrying-while-texting on bikes in Hakodate. The texting is generally perpetrated by high school students, though I have seen a few younger business men do it.

One Nishi high school student is a quasi-celebrity among HIF students. (Nishi high school is at the top of the very steep hill that HIF is on). She cannonballs downhill past HIF everyday on her bike at speeds that have to be somewhere near 30 mph, and has been reputedly been seen texting while doing it. This has earned her the respect and admiration of the guys who wish they were that cool, and sarcastic quips of “Oh, that’s a smart idea…” from those of the more reasonable gender.

So the moral of the story is, don’t be afraid to crash your bike, because as that bike safety program demonstrated, there will be mats to land on.

Well, maybe not.