Adventures on a little yellow bicycle

A lovely sunny day yesterday there were the first signs of the revered blossoms and I decided to go to Yoyogi Park to see the shrine.  This involved my first journey on the Tokyo underground.  I think we all know that I'm not a natural when it comes to public transport, but this is apparently the most efficient underground system in the world - so reliable that if on the rare occasion trains don't run to time, passengers are given late notices to take to work.  It is based on the London underground system, using different colours to differentiate between lines. That's as far as the similarities go in my book because the lines reminded more of a ball of coloured string than of the great bear.  This, coupled with the fact that the map in its entirety is rarely seen in English, meant I spent two hours getting to my destination and as a number of lines use the same platforms, I found myself lost several times.  A payment is required for each change so it was a very expensive experience.

For the next few days, as Mark has gone to New Zealand and the car is in the garage (and far too complicated to use, but that's another story...) I'm sticking to my new yellow bike.  I love my bike;  it has no gears so my thighs are getting very toned.  It has an in-built lock that jams the back wheel - no use in London, but for crime free Tokyo, its perfect!  A cyclist in Tokyo can do pretty much whatever she likes, jumping from pavement to road to avoid people and lights. Each crossing has a separate lane and each street has walkways on both sides.  Because I have longer legs than most of the locals, I'm a bit faster and tend to stick to the roads to avoid taking anyone out.  Its also great to cut through local parks although, rather hilariously, our local 'Olympic Park', which has a great cycle, running and walking track, must only be used in an anti clockwise direction.  This means families of people and dog walkers are all going round together the same way.

Mark keeps his bike outside and doesn't bother to lock it.  I was dubious about this until yesterday when our local police officer came round and gave me his personal number in case we had any trouble.   Extraordinary!