Bicycles

Our train station is famous in Japan because once or twice a year, on a slow news day, one of the TV stations will turn up with cameras and crew and explain to a nationwide audience that we have the biggest illegal parking problem of any place in Japan.

Within a week of this happening the embarrassed local government sends trucks around gathering up illegally parked bicycles and taking them somewhere inconvenient across the city, where it holds them for ransom, closely guarded by cheerful, semi-retired old men. The last time I liberated my bicycle from such a kidnapping I had to pay nearly ¥3000. I've had to do it three times since I've been here. It's not always after the TV news snippet. Sometimes it's at the end of the tax year, when they're trying to balance the city budget and are drumming up a little extra cash. Kidnapping bicycles is a profitable business around here.

The really stupid thing about this is that it's actually cheaper to risk the kidnapping than to pay parking fees, as long as your bicycle is not kidnapped more than twice a year. (I sat down and calculated this after my first exasperating ransom payment.) Not only that, the legal parking is inconvenient. You are likely to be assigned a parking spot so far from the station that you might as well walk from your house in the first place, and since the main reason for me to use my bicycle to and from the station is to save my back from carrying all the books and papers I have to carry for work, there isn't much point.

A few years ago they tore down the wonderful old friendly and traditional shopping area on our side of the station to make way for a modern, ugly 27-storey building, four floors of shops and the rest apartments. This was pushed through by the local government, hand in glove with the local construction industry and therefore also the local yakuza (mafia). The local people - EVERYBODY - opposed it, which is why it took twenty years to happen, but pressure was brought to bear, the mainstay of the opposition eventually collapsed (amid whispers of bribery and threats) and in the end the aging storekeepers sold out. Some took up offers of places in the new building, but many didn't. They moved, retired, or sold their businesses, and the atmosphere of the community changed.

These days, our wonderful modern building is held up as an example. Other city government officials visit in little clipboard-carrying groups, muttering to each other and taking notes on what not to do when you want to develop an area. Half the shop space in the new building is either empty or taken up by game parlours, they haven't been able to rent out many of the apartments, the crime rate has soared, community feeling has all but disappeared, and local shoppers flocked to the other side of the train station where the old shopping street still survives. It's a lot friendlier over there. Our side of the station is now famous for having one of the highest bag-snatching rates in Japan.

This new building, we were assured beforehand, would take care of the bicycle parking problem. A new underground parking area would be built for commuters, and besides that there would be parking for 8000 bicycles around the building. Some of this parking, of course, would be reserved for the people who lived there, but the rest was supposed to be for shoppers.

Our skepticism was well founded. The underground parking is expensive, inconvenient, and closes at some ridiculously early hour, nine or ten o'clock at night. Hoards of commuters are still arriving home after that, and where are they supposed to park? We're not told. Most people park around the station or around the building, illegally. The city employs a small army of semi-retired men who patrol the free parking area around the building from before nine in the morning (when the shops open) stopping people from parking there. What this means is that part-time workers (mostly women) who start work after nine o'clock, can park there, but early starters can't. They have to park illegally elsewhere.

I only need parking three times a week for work, and a local coffee shop owner right next to the station told me that I could use the reserved parking space outside his shop, no problem, don't worry about it. That is very sweet of him and I feel privileged. I think I'm the only person in this area who has free, legal parking for my bicycle at any hour of the day. My bicycle hasn't been kidnapped for a few years now, and the only price I've had to pay is the truly horrible coffee I feel obliged to drink once or twice a week at the ABC Coffee Shop.

Following are some pictures of bicycles parked around the station and around the new building.


On the right side is the ugly new building (you can't see how ugly it is close up), and on the left is what is left of the old shopping area. The supermarket on the left is closing soon, and will be torn down for yet more 'new development'.

There is no way all these bicycles belong to shoppers. At least half of them will still be there after the shops close. The parking area is supposed to be inside the wide bars on the right, but there is never enough space. This photo was taken around six in the evening, and there are some gaps. Earlier in the afternoon there were none.



This is the other side of the building. See the bars? Inside those is the 'legal' parking area for shoppers. All the bicycles behind the power pole are parked illegally. That is most of them, as they extend around to the other side of the building.



Across the road from the previous picture, every bicycle is parked illegally. That white signboard thing in the middle of the bicycles in the front is NO BICYCLE PARKING sign. These signs are all over the place, and get in the way when you park your bicycle.



This is the other side of the station, looking towards the Coop supermarket where we do most of our shopping these days. The Coop is on the right, and a bank on the left. The Coop has two bicycle parking lots, neither of which is visible in this picture. They are usually both full.



This is from the inside of one of the Coop bicycle parking lots, looking toward the Coop.

The Man tells me these are not very interesting photographs. I've told him they might be interesting for people who don't live here, you never know. In any case, they are the only ones I took today, and you have now seen a small fraction of our local bicycle parking problem.