Visiting the epicenter of Asian motorcyclingA trip to the Ueno motorcycle district of Tokyo By Grant Parsons
So there I am, standing in the Narita airport outside Tokyo, Japan, with a few hours to kill and nothing on my schedule. Naturally, I have a plan: Take the free time I have available at the end of a crowded week testing the Suzuki GSX-R750 (great bike), and make a banzai run on the Ueno (WAY-no) Distrct of central Tokyo. There, I'm told, are an impossibly huge number of stores, shops and sidewalk vendors that cater exclusively to motorcyclists. Yes, it's tough being a motorcycle magazine guy for a living. And yes, I consider myself extremely lucky for days like this—and most other days, for that matter. Ueno, I'm told, really is something to behold, one of the largest concentrations of motorcycle retail shops in the world. Considering the fact that the vast majority of the world's motorcycles are made in Japan and nearby parts of Asia, you've got to figure that a motorcycle district in the heart of Japan's biggest metropolis will be suitably over-the-top. Clearly, I need to get there. But, this being Japan, nothing is ever simple for an American who doesn't speak the language or read Kanji. Ueno is more than 50 miles from where I am. Luckily, I have a pocketful of yen that I don't have any big plans for, and that, as it turns out, is a good thing in a place like Tokyo, since nothing is cheap here. First stop, the train station beneath Narita airport. Luckily, the woman behind the counter speaks a little English. I smile and gesture my way into buying a one-way ticket on the Narita Express, a non-stop train to the largest subway station in Tokyo, aptly called "Tokyo Station." The one-hour ride costs 3,000 yen, or about $27. With the return trip costing the same, I'm into this for $54. Add in another subway ride or two to get me to Ueno, and it'll be $60. But hey, we're talking about the epicenter of Japanese motorcycling here. So what's a few yen? Down on the platform, the Japanese commuters who ride the trains all the time are queued up in neat little lines according to some markings on the floor. Hmm. Wonder what that means.
A little staring at the numbers and then staring at my ticket shows that there's a good chance that everyone is lined up by which train car they'll be getting on. The ticket agent, who apparently figured (rightly so) that I was clueless, had circled a few numbers and written in the English words "Car" and "Seat" next to them. Hey, thanks! The train comes, and the weirdest thing happens. The doors open, and everyone gets off. The doors stay open. No one in all the little lines in front of the doors moves. The doors close. The train just stays there, doors closed with no one one it. The station is deathly silent. A cleaning crew moves through the cars very quickly. Only then do the doors open, and everyone gets on. Can you imagine that orderly scene in a New York subway? I find my seat, settle in, listen to a few MP3s and stare out at a countryside that changes from surprisingly pastoral near the airport—like, with actual farms—to suburban to urban to impossibly urban over the course of an hour. Then we're dumped out at Tokyo Station. This place is huge. And bustling. And crammed with more people than Daytona's Main Street during Bike Week. Me, I need to find the subway to Ueno. One saving grace is that there are occasional English subtitles on the signs. Another saving grace is that I've researched fairly carefully where I want to go. I hang back and watch how the locals do it—they look at a giant subway map on the wall with station names and prices on it, then put money in an automated fare machine and get a ticket. Simple enough, except the map looks like a multi-colored woven basket and makes New York's subway map look like a simple peace symbol.
Ueno (above), it turns out, is pretty freakin' impressive.
Tokyo can be a strange place to a wandering American. But if you're a motorcyclist, you'll feel right at home the second you hit the sidewalks in Ueno. Here, you'll see it all. Tricked-out "monkey bikes"—little 50cc machines with more custom parts than a drag racer. Ultra-cool Japanese domestic market motorcycles, most of them limited to 400cc due to licensing restrictions. Replica road-racing leathers from vintage Freddie Spencers to last week's Valentino Rossis.
I wander into the first store I come to, the massive Corin superstore (right). The funny thing is that for as large as it appears on the outside, it sure feels cramped inside. Shelves of jackets and helmets overflow to create an almost-claustrophobic feeling. I guess with real-estate prices in Tokyo, you need to sell a lot of stuff to pay the rent.
I had heard this from others who had visited here, but it still surprises me. I had been told that store owners didn't want pictures taken because they didn't want their prices to be seen. I guess that's possible, but all it would take to blow that theory would be another owner wandering over to price-compare. I'm guessing that it's also possible that many of the logo items—replica leathers and stickers and helmets—are not necessarily officially licensed. Who knows? I spend the rest of the time in stores taking photos as discretely as possible, which is why some of these pictures aren't framed as well as they could be. One of the great things about being an American in Japan in general and in the Ueno District in particular, is the wonderful English translations that appear on T-shirts and signs. While you have to admire the Japanese infatuation with English, and their desire to translate hip Japanese slogans into it, the fact remains that not every one is perfectly done.
Maybe I've just been doing it wrong. Every store seems to come with its own lifestyle, and I guess it's possible that's what you're buying here. After all, why should Japan be different from the rest of the world. Chaps, fringe, tough-guy jackets and beanie helmets are crammed to the rafters in one store. The same store boasts something like a shrine built in front of an old Harley-Davidson red-white-and-blue "1" back-patch, complete with a picture of Jay Springsteen. Bummer that the clerk hovers over me so I can't get out my camera. If your motorcycles of choice run more toward the bent-over kind, you'll find all the lifestyle accessories you need across the street at the sportbike store. Repli-jackets and full-face helmets spill out of shelves where you can buy knee pucks resembling Japanese Kanji characters and titanium-plated road-race gloves. I'll bet those rule on a 50cc bike.
A few stores later, I'm wandering among floors on a spiral staircase when I start to feel a bit light-headed. OK, all this culture shock can be a bit overhwhelming, but then again, it has been a while since I've eaten. Maybe something to drink would be good.
What the heck. Maybe it's a sports drink. I cough up the 175 yen. I'm hoping a Pocari is some kind of made-up thing, and not a person who sits in a sauna all day from whom the company harvests, um, fluids. After a few swigs, I decide that if a Pocari is a big, sweaty guy, he must eat a lot of honeydew. Turns out Pocari Sweat is a lot like melon Gatorade. Not bad, really. Shame about the name. It's good that I've fortified myself for exploring the rest of Ueno, because there's a lot of it. I wander through a three-story multi-line dealership, with two floors of new bikes, one floor of used bikes and a basement that handles service work. Most all of the new bikes are smaller displacement machines, but you can still buy a Hayabusa, at least in theory. I'm told that licensing in Japan has been relaxed a bit recently, but there are still a few tiers that are separated by displacement and cost. Under 50cc is simple, and even up to 400cc is relatively easy to do.
Which is all a long way of saying that here, smaller machines rule. And after a while, I really start getting into them. I guess it's true that you always want what you can't get. Bring a Japanese enthusiast to the U.S., and he'd go nuts at the big bikes; take me to Japan, and I start thinking 400cc is cool. Go figure. What's really neat about Japanese market 400s is that you can get just about everything in a 400cc version. Want a shrunken Honda Interceptor? Here's an RVF400 that looks just like one. Like Valentino Rossi's (former) GP Honda? How about a 400cc CBR painted to look just like it. Maybe you're more of a cruiser guy. Here, a 250 Virago actually looks impressive. It's when you stumble on something like a big GSX-R, though, that you're suddenly blown away by the gargantuan size, relatively speaking (above). We Americans do have it good.
Maybe they are a bargain. It's all part of the confusion of Japan.
One guy will be chatting up a customer behind an impossibly cramped counter. Only inches away, another guy lays on his back under a bike on an oil-stained wood floor with two glaring work-lights blazing on the whole scene. It looks like someone's going to shoot a really, really small movie in here.
You simply don't see cruddy vehicles of any kind on the streets of Tokyo (right). Maybe with this kind of horrendous traffic, stuff just doesn't last long. Or maybe people really actually do take great care of their stuff. After a few hours of wandering around Ueno, I'm pretty beat. I sit down on a bench in front of a store to relax. A few minutes later, a guy on a small-displacement chopper pulls up. When I ask if I can take his picture, he enthusiastically agrees (below).
I tell him "Ueno, very cool!" gesturing to the blocks of motorcycle stores. "But in USA,'' he says. "More?" "Not like this." I say back. "Ueno very cool!" He looks around, as if he sees the place for the first time. He takes long enough to stare at the buildings that I worry he hasn't understood my feeble attempts to communicate. Then he looks back to me. "Yes,'' he says, smiling and nodding, "Ueno very cool!" Like in many of the world's best places, here, the common language is motorcycling.
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