Trip to find a Bike!

On Wednesday Dereck and I made our first trip driving off base by ourselves. We've been off base quite a few times with friends, and walking off base really isn't a big deal. But after about a week of driving around on base to get used to some of the traffic signs driving on the left side of the road, we thought we might be ready. With Dereck behind the wheel, I was the navigator. Thanks to technology, I was able to see our route clearly on Google Maps and I had a good idea of where we were going. The main mission of the trip was to buy me a bicycle and the first place we went to was a second hand shop. We had been to one before on the other side of base that is within walking distance, but had no luck finding a bike. It only took about 10 minutes to get to the shop and we found it without any problems. The traffic wasn't too bad but it was still quite steady. The roads we were on were smaller so speeds were kept low, which I enjoyed. I think one of the strangest things about driving around the towns here in Japan is that there doesn't seem to be zoning like in the USA. Along on section of road you'll pass a few houses, a school, a restaurant, a business, a farm, more houses, etc. Its just so random!

This shop was much bigger than the other second hand shop we went too and had some really cool things in it... but their bike selection had nothing of my liking (or price range). I finally was able to drag Dereck out of the store after promising we will go again and we headed up to Joyful Honda. We had to back track the route we just took and then kept heading north. Traffic had picked up at this point so with all the stoplights it took us a little bit to get there, but we never got lost and found it fun to see all the different stuff surrounding the base. Also, since Joyful Honda is huge there were some signs marking the way. This store is a Japanese superstore that is like a mix of a grocery store, Walmart/Target, Home Depot, and Petsmart. Its crazy huge and has anything and everything you could probably need there. We found the bike department and probably spent about 30 minutes looking through the bikes and figuring out which kind we wanted to get. I decided on a silver bike that has 3 gears, a front basket, and a rear tire rack. I can choose to attach another basket to the back or just get some bungee cords to attach some parcels to it. It comes with a tire lock and a pretty cool bell too. And though its "my" bike mainly, it is silver so Dereck can ride it sometimes and not feel like he's on a girl's bike the whole time.

I was pretty proud of myself since I was able to successfully communicate to the store worker that I needed to get a bike from outside. I don't really know if it was the "correct" way to say it, but he understood just fine so I'm happy with that. Bike in Japanese is "Jitensha". I added that to the phrase "I need" while pointing outside and he knew what I wanted right away. The bike came to be about $160 and we were okay with that, since I hope to use it as a main mode of transportation quite often. We had to buy a helmet as well since base rules require it, but I'm okay with that. If I'm sharing the road with cars I don't need convincing to wear a helmet!

So after we purchased the bike and the workers attached the pedals and check it out (he demonstrated to me that the brakes and bell all worked well) we were able to take it home. The next step in this process was trying to fit the bike into our car. I apologize for not posting pictures of our car yet (they are coming soon, I promise!) but this is NOT a large vehicle, and my bike has some good size to it. After a bit of frustration we were able to get the seats in the into a position that allowed the car's rear hatch to close. Of course, these seat positions were so terrible that I couldn't feel the lower half of my body on the way home, and I'm surprised that Dereck was able to drive with he's seat back up so far. But even though it was a bit uncomfortable, we made it back to base with no issues. The traffic had cleared up a bit so the trip home took less than 10 minutes.

I haven't uploaded pictures onto my camera yet, so my next post will be a big picture post included our car as well as my new bike. I'll try to get it up tomorrow!

Sayonara!