The average work hours here in the lab (and I think in general in Japan) are pretty different than I am used to. Most people don't even make it in here until around 10:00 in the morning, but they stay until 7 or 8 at night. I haven't yet started this pattern myself, instead preferring to come in during the quiet morning hours and get some time alone in my regularly overcrowded “office”. That brings me to the main story that I will share in this blog installment.
I will use this as a general lesson for gaijin (that is the word in Japanese for foreigner – and it isn't considered a “nice” word). When you arrive at the library nice and early before most of the rest of the students are out and about, and park your new wheels in front of the building there are a couple of caveats to consider. First, don't assume that yours will be the only silver 1-speed, with hand brakes and a black basket on the front, rear and front fenders and a clear bike lock on the back wheel (I took note of a lot of features before leaving my bike) that will be parked there when you emerge a couple of hours later. Second, don't assume that your bike will remain in that same easy to find place that you left it when you locked it up.
The photo on the right shows you the number of bikes that accumulate in front of a building during a normal day here (click on the photo to enlarge). And as you might or might not be able to tell, most of them are exactly the same as mine. And another fun fact that I learned, is that because there are so many bikes that get parked in front of these buildings, there is a guy whose job it is to organize and shuffle bikes around to make them fit better and to create walking paths between bikes.
So the moral of the story – I need a load of stickers that I can put on my bike so that I can identify it from now on, and maybe even some kind of noise-making device that I can activate remotely.
