The Perils of Bike Parking in Tokyo

The space under a highway used as bike parking in my neighborhood. 

Since Mars and I moved into Yoga, we've simply fallen in love with the area. The station is 3 minutes from our place and by train we are only 10 min. from the city center. At the bottom of our apartment is a convenience store, and across the street is a $1 convenience store, a donut shop, and a veggie market. The Post Office? 1 min. away on foot. Pizza places? Domino's, 3 minutes, another Japanese one, 1 min. Our other favorite restaurants? Most 1 minute. The farthest, 5 minutes. All of the banks we use and supermarkets? 3 minutes. With the possibly of its small size and the noisy Chihuahuas in the building next door, in terms of convenience, there is no way we're ever gonna beat this place... Except for in one respect: Owning a bike.

Due to the fact that everything was such a nice distance away, we thought it would be great to own bicycles, and decided to pick up a pair. Beyond that, in having bikes we also thought we could save on train fees because a lot of the areas we go to outside of Yoga actually aren't that far away. Unfortunately, we came to realize that like anything, the convenience of being right in the center of everything at a reasonable cost, still has its price.

A sample of some of the damage to my bike after only a few months of
parking it in public bike parking.

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After we got our bikes we realized that our apartment actually didn't have any bike parking. Given the size of it, (and the fact that we had to fit two people stuff inside) we really didn't want to try and put them in the house. Even if we did, the small size of the elevator would mean that it would take two of us to take them out one by one. Not cool. As such, we tried parking them outside of our place, but for reasons unbeknownst to us, this meant that passersby thought the baskets on the front made for convenient trash cans...Which is even funnier given that there are trash cans right outside of the convenience stores! It's not cool to litter on the ground, but throwing your garbage into someone's bike basket is, apparently.

The bike parking pass that I had to wait 3 months for.
The slender sticker goes on the back of the pass,
the bigger one on the bike. 

While that is a minor complain the much bigger issue is that Mari's bike ended up getting stolen with a month or so, and while mine never got stolen, it did get repeated picked up by the city for being parked illegally. After paying the cost of the bike itself (about $100) in tickets and having to walk to the impound (20 min away) at least 5 times to get it, we decided to get a pass for the bike parking lot nearest to our place on the other side of Yoga station. It was about a 10 min walk away, making it officially farther away that almost anywhere I wanted to bike to. Not cool. Beyond that, as the bike parking place is extremely crowded, within a month or so, my bike had received more damage that it had in the 6 months I had it previously. There goes the re-sale value.

Now, I thought that this was inconvenient in and of itself... Until I made the mistake of letting the pass expire, and I found out just how difficult it usually is to get those passes. In the end, I ended up having to wait almost 3 months before I could get another one (finally at the end of the 3rd month, I got my ass up at 7am on a Sunday morning (first day of the renewal period) to be the first in line to get one. During that three month interrum, I had to buy packets of daily tickets, and then walk out there every night to put them on the bike before the following morning.

Anyway, after finally getting my bike pass again, at this point, I'm certainly not taking it for granted. And while I still love my apartment (loud-ass Cihuahuas, crows, pigeons and all) I've also realized that this will be the last time I move into a place without bike parking.