Clearing the final biking in Japan hurdle - the rider skills course
After finally passing my ogata (large motorbike) practical test last week, I foolishly thought it was all over: I had my licence, I was now the Two-Wheeled Titan of Tokyo and women would be ogling the vast, throbbing machine between my legs before week was out.
So imagine my disappointment, if you will, after finding out about the compulsory short course and first aid training course, which incidentally seems to be unavailable anywhere less than 45 minutes away from my place.
After choking back the temper tantrum, I signed up for the day’s course at Kasaibashi Driving School in Edogawa-ku, which I finally did today.
The morning was spent on riding practice: firstly with the simulator, an archaic device that looked like one of those bob-and-down rides for kids in front of a hefty screen, and which bore about as much resemblance to actual riding as this does to common sense, but after binning my virtual ride a few times — I swear, the cyclist that tried to turn in front of me on an empty road desired naught but the sweet release of death — we took to a couple of Honda CB750s and went round their track for a bit.
Up until now, our good teacher had shown a tendency to digress a little, especially onto musicals for some reason - the poor kid taking the course with me had no idea what West Side Story was, and he was already in the doghouse for not bringing a helmet. On the track, however, things were very different: he just told us to follow and promptly bombed off round the nearest set of S-bends at forty.
Fortunately for me, however, I have no fear of destroying other people’s equipment (seriously, ask my dad about the time I put a dent in his vintage Ossa), and was in hot pursuit. After an hour or so of S-bends, slaloms, going over the bridge and bumps, all both sat down and standing on the pegs, he pulled over and set up a little low speed turn course, which on a whale like the CB750 is no easy task.
Still, you can’t fail this, so meh.
After lunch, I was shuffled into a classroom for 3 hours of first aid training: idiot stuff, mostly, how to tie a bandage, CPR; and rather more interestingly, how to use one of those AED machines that have cropped up like mushrooms over the last year.
I’m still wary of these. One crusty security guard with a sackful of badly-dubbed ER videos and an inability to find a pulse is all it would take to juice me into the next life, but there we are. If nothing else, it reminded me that the Japanese pronunciation of the word “buzzer” - which is set off whenever one of these bad boys is whipped out of its receptacle - sounds like “boozer”, and which prompted a quiet celebratory ale at the local hostelry.
Still. It’s all over now, and I get my licence on Monday. Joy.
Tags: driving school, japan test, kasai, motorbike