One last Japan story...

Japanese ride bikes.
A lot.

Basically, Tokyo was full of thousands of bikes, none of which were mounted or locked on to anything. We discovered that the back wheel is locked, preventing would-be thieves from riding the bike away, but not doing much to keep someone from carrying it off. I guess that carrying a bike would look strange, and loading bikes into a truck would also be too much of a hassle.

In short, we were often standing on sidewalks with lines of dozens of bikes standing neatly in a row.

Our last Saturday morning, we got up very early and had a long day of touring.

While Dave was looking at the tourbook, I turned around and my backpack brushed a bicycle next to me. In slow-motion, I turned to see the bike slowly leaning to the left. Then, the next bike fell. And the next one. And the nextoneandthenextoneandthenextone....

Until an entire line of nearly 100 bicycles had all fallen over.

A small Japanese boy stared at me with a look on his face that said, "you're in trouble!"

I looked Dave in the eyes and said, "RUN!" We started hoofing it to the nearest metro station in a desperate attempt to avoid whatever punishment the police felt like handing out.

Another travel adventure!