Post by bigshingle on Nov 22, 2007 14:37:47 GMT -5
I finally registered a few days back. I should have done that a long time ago.
As I mentioned in my Welcome post, in 1984 I was working in Japan and needed a bike to get (from Hayama where I lived) to the train station (Zushi, about 10 km away.)
An American looking for a bike got the dealer about as excited as Japanese Yamaha dealers are likely to get -- that is, she (a middle-aged woman watching the shop) showed a certain, almost imperceptible, fleeting wrinkle just next to the eyelids, and told me if I was willing to accept a brand-new, three-year-old bike with American export specs she could get me a good price.
I paid $600 and the bike was sent in the crate from a Yamaha warehouse where it had been taking up space for several years waiting for someone like me.
Although the deal was "in the crate," Yamaha wouldn't let me have it until the shop put it together and tested it (no extra cost.) For the U.S. model the headlight and tail light were always on, but that was against the law in Japan, so they mounted a light switch on the handlebars.
When you buy a new car or bike in Japan the dealer normally takes it to the Land Transportation Office for inspection and licensing -- a major ordeal. For a special price like mine, Yamaha's responsibility ended at the door, and I had to do the licensing.
I rode the SR to the inspection station near Yokohama without license plates. The inspector told me I shouldn't have done that, that the bike should have been brought up on a truck. I can't imagine what the fine (or jail time) would have been in most countries, but a Japanese cop simply took me aside and advised me not to do things like that too often.
The first thing I did was get rid of the "American" handle bars that were like the rack on a cape buffalo and took up both lanes of a Japanese street. Later I got clip-ons and made a few other changes.
The photos are from a few weeks after I bought the bike. I'd just come back from Yabisu Pass, a mud and dirt cut through the mountains just a few miles south and west of Tokyo. Trout streams and an occasional tent back in the trees, a car on the road now and then. You'd think you were in Northern Ontario or Alaska -- except a city of 25-million hid just over the hills to the east.
The photos were before cleaning off the mud afterward. Ho-hum pics of a stock SR500H, interesting only for showing how much motorcycle could be bought for so little money in the early 80s when all the Japanese makers had way over produced.
I still have the bike. Can't part with it because with the U.S. dollar going south, I'll never be able to afford to replace it.
Gman, thanks again for the help.
As I mentioned in my Welcome post, in 1984 I was working in Japan and needed a bike to get (from Hayama where I lived) to the train station (Zushi, about 10 km away.)
An American looking for a bike got the dealer about as excited as Japanese Yamaha dealers are likely to get -- that is, she (a middle-aged woman watching the shop) showed a certain, almost imperceptible, fleeting wrinkle just next to the eyelids, and told me if I was willing to accept a brand-new, three-year-old bike with American export specs she could get me a good price.
I paid $600 and the bike was sent in the crate from a Yamaha warehouse where it had been taking up space for several years waiting for someone like me.
Although the deal was "in the crate," Yamaha wouldn't let me have it until the shop put it together and tested it (no extra cost.) For the U.S. model the headlight and tail light were always on, but that was against the law in Japan, so they mounted a light switch on the handlebars.
When you buy a new car or bike in Japan the dealer normally takes it to the Land Transportation Office for inspection and licensing -- a major ordeal. For a special price like mine, Yamaha's responsibility ended at the door, and I had to do the licensing.
I rode the SR to the inspection station near Yokohama without license plates. The inspector told me I shouldn't have done that, that the bike should have been brought up on a truck. I can't imagine what the fine (or jail time) would have been in most countries, but a Japanese cop simply took me aside and advised me not to do things like that too often.
The first thing I did was get rid of the "American" handle bars that were like the rack on a cape buffalo and took up both lanes of a Japanese street. Later I got clip-ons and made a few other changes.
The photos are from a few weeks after I bought the bike. I'd just come back from Yabisu Pass, a mud and dirt cut through the mountains just a few miles south and west of Tokyo. Trout streams and an occasional tent back in the trees, a car on the road now and then. You'd think you were in Northern Ontario or Alaska -- except a city of 25-million hid just over the hills to the east.
The photos were before cleaning off the mud afterward. Ho-hum pics of a stock SR500H, interesting only for showing how much motorcycle could be bought for so little money in the early 80s when all the Japanese makers had way over produced.
I still have the bike. Can't part with it because with the U.S. dollar going south, I'll never be able to afford to replace it.
Gman, thanks again for the help.
