Super-Shopping In Tokyo's Bike District
SUPER-SHOPPING IN TOKYO'S BIKE DISTRICT
ESCAPING FROM THE TEEMing madness of Tokyo’s Ueno railway station, a motorcycle nut can’t help but notice the noise. The bustling city square is humming with commuter traffic, but above it all the familiar bark of a megaphoned Hailwood Replica Ducati rings though. A GSX-R Suzuki follows closely, cutting the stale air with a racebike’s staccato crackle. A distant trail of blue smoke marks the passage of a Kawasaki KDX200.
The motorcycle nut knows he’s arrived at a special place: This is Ueno (pronounced Way-no), the fabled bike district in the heart of Japan’s capital of 12 million people. Motorcycles are everywhere.
This grubby four-block area in downtown Tokyo is a motorcycling Mecca. Riders from all over Japan make the regular pilgrimage to see store after store filled with every bike and accessory ever made.
These are not ordinary motorcycle shops, either. There are over 100 specialty stores, boutiques stocked to the roof with a dizzying array of goodies.
On the corner closest to the station is a 10-story clothing store. Inside the ground floor the walls are lined with rack upon rack of Americanand European-made helmets. The second floor is an Aladdin’s Cave of Japanese helmets-thousands in every style and color. Floor three is wall-to-wall bags, radios, intercoms and decals, so much stuft’it’s hard to walk between the overflowing shelves. On the fourth floor, nothing but
gloves, every style you can imagine in leather, nylon and waterproof plastic. Leather pants, jackets and assorted cruiser wear jam the aisles on the fifth floor. And up one more level the racks are stacked high with boots of every style.
With a mind numbed by such variety, it’s hard to absorb the remaining floors full of off-road gear, roadrace leathers, etc. And this is just one store, admittedly the biggest, owned by a man known-with respect-as the Godfather of Ueno.
Mr. Wakabayashi’s huge Corin chain of stores accounts for almost a quarter of all the bike shops in Ueno. Wakabayashi credits his company’s success to providing everything a rider could want and always having the goods in stock. Across the street is an example. It’s the Performance Store, a four-story building crammed with enough hardened steel and billet aluminum to rebuild a Boeing jet. One floor is stacked to the rafters with high-performance carburetor kits. Hundreds I of carbs dangle from the ceiling like aluminum and magnesium apples just waiting to be picked.
Upstairs is a sport rider’s dream. Here, glass-fronted shelves sparkle with billet-aluminum footpeg assemblies-six different styles for CB400 Hondas alone. In the corner sits a wooden crate. Its label reads simply, “Stage Three Kawasaki Z-l.” A full-race motor in a box. It’s enough to give a gearhead a migraine.
Take an aspirin and head for the street because there’s plenty
more to see outside. If you’re in the market for a bike, Ueno has you covered. There are a few brand-new machines for sale, but the majority are late-model used sportbikes in row after row of shops. Most are large, well-lit frontages just like you’d find in any big American city.
In between are little hole-inthe-wall operations no bigger than a one-car garage.
One store owner says rctrostyled bikes are still big business in Japan, but he points next door to Choppers Paradise when asked which way the market is going. Customsin particular, Harley-Davidsons-are the big growth industry and Corin’s Harley hangout draws the biggest crowds.
Here, the walls are lined with familiar American names. Arlen Ness, Corbin and Performance Machine glow in neon beneath a solid canopy of chromed pipes suspended from the ceiling. The walls are piled high with handlebars and the shelves bulge with a mindboggling quantity of bolt-ons.
It’s the rare rider who leaves Ueno empty-handed. But some come simply to soak up the two-wheeled sights and sounds. One weather-beaten 55-year-old rode his R100 BMW 300 miles just to sit and watch all the action. Spreading his leather-clad arms to the sky he marvels, “There’s nowhere else like this in Japan.”
And once you’ve seen it you’ll probably agree that there’s nothing like the Ueno bike district anywhere else in the world.
David Dewhurst
