everyone has their japan travel fantasies; mine was to ride one of those little scooters through the bucolic japanese countryside, preferably on a narrow road flanked by bright green rice paddies. though i am in no way trained, qualified, or endorsed to ride any variety of motorized two-wheeled vehicle, according to my research the "scooter fantasy" was attainable because in japan anybody with a driver's license is permitted to drive motorcycles/mopeds with an engine displacement of less than 50cc, a category known as "gentsuki" (原付). during my research i also found the best place to rent one, a nationwide motorcycle rental chain with a decent foreigner-friendly online reservation site called "rental 819". the issue was their gentsuki availability wasn't exactly the best, their main focus is motorcycles and some locations don't rent gentsuki at all, also their locations were sparse in places and didn't line up with my travel plans often. i was really surprised, for example, that they had no outposts in the izu peninsula, that seemed like it would be a great place for some touring. to some extent, though, i was almost relieved when it never worked out, just like with renting a car i was dragging my feet because i was nervous.
i finally ran out of excuses when i got to sendai and checked on the rental situation there: rental 819 had a location easily accessible by subway, that location had a 50cc "yamaha jog" available to rent the next day, the area around sendai seemed to have many good spots for touring, the weather for the next couple days was supposed to be good, and so on. i'd found the ideal scooter rental opportunity i'd been telling myself the whole trip i was holding out for, if i didn't book it then i'd have to admit that the only reason i didn't rent a scooter is because i was a wimp. in my business hotel room that night, i had a tall canned highball and took the leap, booking the yamaha jog for a three day excursion since adding extra days to the rental was pretty cheap, envisioning a grand leisurely tour around the sendai area...
the next morning, i strolled around good old downtown sendai for a few hours, anxiously killing time until my rental reservation in the afternoon. i visited "sendai akiba", a little mall near the main station called "EBeanS", they had an interesting manga store on the top story where the staff put together elaborate endcap displays for various manga, and they also claim to have the largest collection of shikishi (色紙, the square autograph paper commonly used in japan) from mangaka in the country. from one of the displays, i found out that there's a kirara 4koma about girls and railroads set in the sendai area. because one of their mascots is victini, i made an exception and dropped in to the pokemon center tohoku, luckily escaping without purchasing any of their exclusive merch. i went down sendai's notably long and bustling shopping street, stopping in at book-off and finding enough good stuff there that i made over the tax-free threshold (at bookoff prices, it can sometimes take a lot). finally, when the time came i rode the sendai subway one stop down to rental 819 sendai (in retrospect, had i planned better i probably could have walked).
finding it was pretty easy, it was inside a motorcycle shop with rows of bikes lined up outside. an older guy manning the counter inside helped me with the preliminaries, i was getting along pretty well all in japanese until we had a minor misunderstanding over emergency contact details or something. he told me to wait a second, went in the back, and brought out... a FRENCH guy! in sendai! things proceeded smoothly from there even though his thickly-accented and somewhat rusty english was almost harder to understand than japanese at times, the necessary forms and documents were inspected and signed, i was fitted with a helmet, and then french guy and i went out to the curb out front where the yamaha jog sat waiting. having confessed inside that this was my first time riding any sort of motorized two-wheeled vehicle, he gave me a crash course in scooter basics: the ignition that seemed oddly overcomplicated, the acceleration handle, the blinkers, the gas tank that was literally just a compartment under the footrest where you could see gas sloshing around when it was opened, the storage compartment under the seat into which i immediately deposited my bag of book-off purchases to relieve the load on my back. it did not seem to bode well that i struggled to get the scooter on and off its stand... at any point i expected him to say "you know what, maybe this isn't such a good idea, gimme the keys back". but no, just like with the rental car, it felt like he let me hop on and ride off down the road all too easily...
within the first thirty seconds i realized that this was going to be WAY harder than i'd expected with my occasional reckless optimism. in japan and other places where they're common, you get so used to seeing people confidently zip around on those things that i just kinda assumed it couldn't be that hard, they make it look SO easy. my biggest misconception was that i thought you wouldn't really have to work hard to balance because of the motor or the thicker wheels or something... turns out that's completely wrong, in fact it's basically like riding a bike except that instead of pedaling, your feet just kinda sit down there awkwardly doing nothing. the similarity to riding a bike may not have been a big problem, except for one thing: i haven't so much as touched a bike in a decade or morelittle did i know at the time that i'd end up breaking this streak not even a week later. now there i was, thrust into hard mode right away by a brutal stack of debuffs, wearing a massive backpack throwing off my balance and in a foreign country where they drive on the wrong side of road...
when i got to the end of the road the shop was on and stopped at a traffic light, i found out what the hardest parts are: starting up again after stopping and making turns. staying balanced on two wheels is most difficult when you're going slow, and you can't make turns the same way you do on four wheels by just turning the wheel, instead it's a full body motion, you kinda have to lean into it too. at the time i was unaware of this, so my first turn at that traffic light was a complete disaster, i wobbled all over the road and very nearly wiped out, it felt like i was trying to get a well-trained but occasionally unruly beast back under control. the worst part is that my blatant ineptitude was on full display to everyone else on the road, sitting atop my scooter i was fully exposed, all eyes must have been on me thinking "who let this baka gaijin on the roads???"... actually, they probably couldn't even tell i was foreigner, i was wearing a hefty helmet and sporting a luscious tan on my bare arms and legs from too long spent on brutal walks without sunscreen.
i had no idea where i was going, no hotel booked for the night and no particular destination besides entertaining a vague notion of perhaps making an attempt to drive up nearby mt. zao, in retrospect probably an insane proposition even for a seasoned scooterist. at the shop they'd offered me a smartphone holder as an add-on but i'd declined, i figured i would make my way around based off vibes and dead-reckoning. my first goal, i decided, was to make it out of town to some calmer roads, so at the light i turned left and away from the city. i also favored turning left because i was terrified of making a right turn, in left-hand traffic right turns are the "unfriendly" ones that require going much further and crossing lanes of oncoming traffic. anyways, going that direction ended up being a terrible mistake,
yes, there was a hairpin curvebefore i knew what was happening i was trapped in the flow of traffic going up the steep hills on the edge of town, forced to tackle treacherous initial-d curves within 20 minutes of getting on a moped for the first time.
it was a pretty busy road too, the main access road for a hilltop university campus of some sort, and while slowly making my way up i could feel myself growing an articulated tail of cars stuck behind me. it was an unpleasant sensation, i've always been sensitive about holding up traffic and try to avoid it as much as possible, but in this case i was unavoidably the slowest one on the road. for a brief moment i got some moral support from being joined on the road by some fellow scooter-riding compatriots, perhaps students at the university, then they left me in the dust like it was nothing, proving to the cars behind me that i could go faster if i wanted to. the legal speed limit for gentsuki is supposed to be 30 km/h, in practice you need to be going faster than that in order to avoid getting blown off the road by other drivers, not a problem for most riders because gentsuki can easily go a lot faster than 30 km/h (they will gently admonish you for it with a little red light by the speedometer, though). the reason i was going so slow, of course, is that it was my first time and i was scared, the funny thing being that going slow was actually making this worse because scooters are significantly more stable at higher speeds.
the one source of relief from the perceived pressure of the cars behind me is that on a scooter you're easy to pass because you don't take up much of the road... still, every time a car passed me (and it happened a lot) it was always a little nerve-wracking because the cars would come so close to me, if i lost control for even a second and veered off towards them there'd be an immediate impact. generally i felt extremely exposed and vulnerable, it's not like driving a car where you're safely ensconced in your personal pod insulated from the world, i felt like i was basically running around in the road naked. besides the helmet, i wasn't wearing any protective gear whatsoever, not even long pants or sleeves, even if i got into a minor scrape i'd probably end up in bad shape...
the road eventually came back down the hill and emerged in sendai's southwestern suburbs, merging with another road to become a major throughfare. i relaxed a bit because it straightened out too, and drivers eager to pass me now had a whole additional lane they could use to do so. i continued straight down the road for a while, hoping it would eventually lead out of the city. i guess i could have pulled in and stopped at a convenience store or somewhere in order to get my bearings, but for some reason i felt like i had to maintain my momentum, if i stopped i wouldn't be able to get moving again. naturally the road did not end up leading out of town, instead it went up a little hill and then petered out into a neighborhood up there.
in the safety of suburban seclusion, i pulled up next to the curb and took stock. much as i hate to be a quitter, there was absolutely no way i was making it through another three days of scootering without falling dead of a heart attack from the constant terror. in the original fantasy, the scooter tour was supposed to be laid-back, relaxing, the kind of thing that should be drawn-out; in reality, it turned out to be thrilling, the kind of experience best taken in small doses unless you're one of those real freaks that would love to ride a roller coaster for six hours straight. there was absolutely nothing to be ashamed of about wrapping it up "early", after all i'd gotten over my initial fear, made the reservation, showed up, rode off, conquered university hill and the aobajou curve, made it halfway across town... it just wasn't quite what i'd been expecting when i made the original extended reservation. i consulted the map on my phone and it looked like from where i was i had a pretty easy route back to the rental shop, no big hills, curves, or right turns, piece of cake. all i had to do was survive the dense traffic, since it was now around the time people were getting off work...
in what felt like a fraction of the time it had taken me to get from there to the hilltop neighborhood, i rolled up once again outside the motorcyle shop, this time facing the opposite direction from the one i'd left in. i shut off the engine, somehow managed to successfully deploy the stand, and barged back in to the shop, declaring to everyone inside two hours into my three-day rental「今回はここまで!やっぱり刺激的すぎる...」. the staff were assembled inside as if they were awaiting my return, or maybe they'd been discussing contacting the cops to see if there had been any reports of a crazy scooter rider terrorizing the local streets. their response: thank goodness, we were worried... though apparently they were less concerned about safety, and more that i'd be a nuisance to other drivers. i went back outside with french guy so he could debrief me and verify the condition of the scooter, we even talked in japanese for a bit. he asked where i'd gone and i described my treacherous route up the hillside, to that he responded "WOW, really? that's pretty tough, when i was learning i didn't go up there until my tenth ride or so..."
although i still cling to my japan scooter fantasy and hope to revisit someday after getting more practice riding them in a more familiar setting, at the time i had had my fill and was completely over it for a while. i cleared out of sendai right away afterwards, booking a cheap hostel in fukushima and even springing for the shinkansen in order to get there in just twenty minutes (the conventional line, the tohoku main line, takes around 2 hours and requires one transfer). i didn't really do anything the next day in fukushima, i felt like i need some time to recover from all the excitement, and spent the day mostly hanging out in cafés writing. but getting away from it wouldn't be that simple... of course amid all the discussion we had when i returned the scooter, french guy completely forgot to ask for the "extremely important" scooter insurance documents back, which i discovered still shoved in my backpack when i arrived at the hostel in fukushima. i was NOT about to go back, so the next morning i went to the post office and fumbled my way through mailing the documents, sending them an email afterwards to explain...