tokyo. the epicenter of all things cool.

ever since i was a kid my friends and family would bring back omiyage (small gifts) when they travelled to the orient. it started with cool robots, anime and mecha toys made by takatoku and bandai and eventually led into r/c cars by tamiya and kyosho. when i started riding bmx bikes kuwahara was one of the dopest brands out there and a lot of the manufacturers from the states were producing their frames and forks in japan. do you remember those small hand held video game systems from nintendo? they had dual screens, flipped open and only played one preprogrammed game. we all know where that eventually led into. and one of the most innovative pieces of technology that came out of japan in the 80’s was the sony walkman. the casings used to be made out of metal and some even slid closed to be smaller when carried without the cassette. i won’t even go into cars, motorcycles and fashion but you should get the gist. japan is definitely kakkoii.

first stop this morning was tokyo parts. if you’re a huge honda ruckus fan like myself you’ve undoubtedly heard of this company.

located in ueno, tokyo parts is in the middle of bike town. there are a ton of shops having to do with anything on two wheels. sekizawa-san (the owner of tokyo parts) was gracious enough to show us around his establishment and talk about the scooter market in both the US and in japan.

i don’t know what this is but it looked pretty sick. check out the wheel fitment. crikey!

peep the 100cc’s of pure two-stroke insanity.

inside da stow.

sekizawa-san mounted an lcd screen hooked up to an hks camp unit. and if you didn’t already know, his bike is on air bags. this dude clearly loves the zoomer.

wall to wall goodness.

one of the technicians was putting a customers bike back together after paint.

there are a ton of shops selling new and used scooters in ueno. and no the zoomer isn’t being disco’d, just this colorway.

second stop was to KN one of the premier scooter manufacturers and tuners in japan. they don’t build scoots to ride, they build em to race. these are purpose built for the ss1/32 mile drags.

as we headed back to the hotel i was educated in how you self park a car in tokyo.

it’s kinda like the bat cave. you pull your ride on this platform and it spins it around and hoists it in one of the stalls above. and i thought the new lexus LS that can parallel park itself was pretty gnarly.

special thanks to tokyo parts and KN yokohama for their hospitality and for allowing me to drool all over their bikes.

-b