Japan: 'la marche futile'

No, not quite like that, but futile still.

Nor am I talking about the following.


I laughed when I went looking for links with this Google search: 'Japanese peripheral vision'.  382000 hits!

I've told the story before about racist-girl who accused Asians of being poor drivers for having 'slanty eyes'.  Never mind she drove 140km/h in a Saturn, the collision rate's 1/4 per capita in Japan as in Canada, and Asian eyes are wider than tall (i.e. 'slanted' for peripheral vision).

Bad enough that a short people have legs short relative to their shortness, but their stride turnover is pathetic.  Salarymen roll around drunk faster than they could walk.  Japanese pedestrians and cyclists do some dumb shit walking: stop in the middle of the path, make random changes of direction, and turn suddenly and walk into me.  Sure I have animal magnetism, but the truth is these people could never be let loose in the wild (outside Japan) because they'd either get a beat-down for walking like tools, or get run down for same.  I don't know why so few fall onto the train tracks or the road for all the sense they show walking.  Maybe those aren't Chuocide after all. 

I am losing my shit.  I need to get home soon permanently, but three weeks in August will have to do for a year to lower the homicide rate in my end of Tokyo.  It hasn't come to physical violence yet (beyond shoving), but fuck cultural-relativism: only fuckwits walk like many Japanese, and need to be told what they are.  So I have, but in English as it is so much more 'kowai!' to get sworn at in English by an angry 6'1" balding middle-aged white dude than were I to do it in my sadly less masculine Japanese (if anything Japanese can be said to be 'masculine').

It's not peripheral vision: it's road sense.  Friday, had a Shitamachi townie turn into the road just in front of me on a ride this masculine, while I was on my bicycle doing 30km/h.

I avoided that, but then he turned back off of the road across my path again.  I'd swerved to the gutter to avoid his first stupid, so now had no room to get out of it before making contact with him.  Brakes helped but I was still going to hit him: gave him a good Canadian hockey body-check.  Good, as in it didn't hurt me.  He sure got his eikaiwa, before he sped off.  Just as well, feeble Japanese pigs would have found a way to believe him, though he'd entered the road from his house.

More Japanese-as-hothouse:

Impractical for the road and poseur a ride as it is, it's a Japanese keirin bike that could be sold abroad for more than a scooter costs here.  That is a hell of a locking job.  I'd steal it on principle, not that it's big enough to ride off on.  I didn't check to see if it is not lamely on a freewheel, but I've only seen one Japanese on a fixed wheel, but if you're going to go so 'authentic' as to ride without bar-tape (on the road, not a velodrome, but never mind...) should you really have front and rear brakes on a keirin bike?*  Seen near my gym.

*No brakes allowed on a velodrome, so the bikes come without anywhere to bolt them.  You can fudge brakes aftermarket, and should do so for the front if you'll use it on the road, though many abroad don't: relying on 'skip-stopping' (skidding) and having more accidents.   Bad enough to use a track bike on the road, and nominally intelligent to make it a bit safer with a front brake, but the back brake gives less than 30% stopping power to any bike, so if you need that too you should have gotten a road-fixed-gear bike, no?