Riding Japan on a Suzuki GSX 1400

October 2004

By, Stephen D. Taylor

22 January 2005

It was October 22, 2004. This is insane, I thought. Another wild motorcycle high! I was riding south towards Tokyo on a Suzuki GSX 1400, “naked,” motorcycle at 140 kph in the inside passing lane of the Joban Expressway. The Joban had four lanes going in each direction. Traffic moved on the “opposite” side of the road from the United States. This was not your average, garden-variety expressway motorcycle ride. I was riding through buffeting 40 to 50 kph crosswind gusts bearing sheets of rain spawned by Typhoon Takage. Visibility was marginal, but what I could see reminded me of a kind of real-time impressionistic tableau - a myriad of red tail lights hovering, shifting from side to side, in a swirling, gray maelstrom (see www.bigcatventures.com for article: Julier Pass describing ride in storm on Milan beltway).

It was the final day, day twelve, of a motorcycle trip around central Honshu, Japan’s main island. I, and my twelve trip companions, rode clockwise, Pacific Ocean to Sea of Japan, north up the west coast, east across the Japanese Alps, and south to Tokyo, a distance 2100 kilometers. We spent an additional three or four days in Tokyo, so we were in Japan just a little over two weeks.

The homogeneity of Japanese society is reflected on its expressways. Users drive – and ride - in predictable, disciplined fashion. I could depend on drivers following the “keep left except to pass,” rule (an iffy proposition in the United States where drivers, at least tacitly, are supposed to keep right except to pass). Riding a powerful motorcycle at high speed in Japan in typhoon gusts and swirling rain seemed plausible – if not wholly sane – given the consistency of Japanese driver behavior.

Japanese expressways are an engineering wonder. In the United States we boast of the Overseas Highway in the Florida Keys, Boston’s “Big Dig,” Baltimore’s I-95 route under Inner Harbor, I-70 east of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, or I-15 down the Virgin River Gorge between St. George, Utah and Mesquite, Nevada. As extensive as these projects are, Japan’s road engineering seems just as impressive. Examples of creative road engineering seem ubiquitous in that so much sophisticated construction occurs in such a small area.

Honshu has a central spine of mountains up to 150 kilometers wide, with many mountain peaks of 3000 meters, running almost the entire length of the 400 kilometer-wide and 1500-kilometer long island. Imagine Honshu as Godzilla’s father, head and tail under the surface with only the pointy spine and back showing above the surface. The mountains, which represent the monster’s spine, are interlinked with a complex web of superbly engineered roads, tunnels, and spans.

Expressway road surfaces are well maintained, and have rolled granular surfaces instead of smooth asphalt, for the frequent wet driving conditions. When traversing an expressway span, looking in either direction as far as the next river-bend, I could see that the riverbanks were reinforced with concrete siding to forestall damage from earthquakes, and the flooding and mudslides brought by the heavy rains and typhoons.

Someone has to pay for this magnificent highway infrastructure, and, to be sure, a bundle is extracted from the expressway users. The toll for a fifty-kilometer segment might be as much as the yen equivalent of $20.00.

Expressway roadwork is well marked and resultant traffic management is highly organized and efficient. Attentive, well-trained, road workers at construction sites, dressed in light blue uniforms, white hardhats, and white reflective suspenders, slow us down by waving large yellow flags. The uniformity of the dress of these road workers, and the methods they use to slow and redirect traffic, is yet another reflection of the uniformity that marks this island nation.

In my Vietnam motorcycle trip note, published on the Big Cat website (www.bigcatventures.com) in May of 2004, I noted how young the Vietnamese population seemed. Where, in Vietnam, I saw few people my age, in Japan it seemed that more people were more nearly my age than not. A majority of the aforementioned blue uniform road workers, for example, were older. It was an unusual sight to see a blue suited, gray hair, sixty something (always male) waiving a large yellow flag as if he were fanning a fire.

I lived in Japan in the early 1980’s for three years as an executive working for a US financial institution. I learned quickly how uniformity within the Japanese culture is reflected in the peoples’ propensity to embrace discipline, respect for authority, and orderliness. If the Japanese were insects, they’d be bees. The conventional explanation for the homogeneous nature of the Japanese culture says that for 3000 years the Japanese culture developed on a rocky, mountainous island, with few natural resources and little usable land to farm. Because of the insular and crowded conditions, and the need to cooperate in dealing with a hostile environment – earthquakes, floods, etc., the Japanese developed unique, cooperative forms societal interaction to ensure their survival.

Consider the distinctive use of language. A Japanese can say “yes” and mean “no.” For the Japanese, avoidance of open conflict in verbal interchange has a higher social value than “telling the truth,” at least in the Western sense of the words “yes” and “no” having explicit meanings. Between themselves, Japanese use a great deal of nuance in language, facial expression and body language in their communication – they can tell when a “yes” really means a “no,” and that the speaker does not really mean what he says in any explicit sense. Many foreigners, however, have depended exclusively on a Japanese’ words as certifying meaning. It is not enough. One can see how hostilities arose in the 1930’s, between the West and Japan when the West’s and Japan’s different ideas about language usage were perhaps not as understood – by both parties – as they are today.

The Japanese have learned to deal effectively with the world at large - where a “lie” is a “lie”- while retaining their cultural uniqueness. Again, language usage illustrates the point. Consider: when a foreign “loan word” is brought into the Japanese lexicon, a separate alphabet, katakana, is used to record the foreign origin word. This is in contrast to the French who have no separate alphabet, but have instead developed a huge bureaucracy - L’Academie Francaise – to keep words of foreign origin out of their vocabulary. Faced with the pernicious English word “computer” seeping into their usage in the ’70’s, the French invented a replacement word out of whole cloth: ordinateur to take its place. But, the Japanese have no problem assimilating borrowed foreign worlds into their language. Take “ice cream.” The Japanese alter the pronunciation a bit: “ice-u cream-u” and write the resultant word in the katakana alphabet. One culture, the French, fights change and resists foreign influence to retain what it believes to be unique about itself. The other culture, the Japanese, says, “Change? Bring it on. But, we will incorporate it in a way so as not to impinge on the purity of our own traditional cultural patterns and language.”

There are other areas where the traditional and the new happily coexist in the broader Japanese cultural context. Toilets. In the traditional inns – ryokan and minshuku – where we stayed, squat johns we’re de rigueur. Yet in the Ikebukuro Sunshine Prince Hotel, in Tokyo, the toilets were high tech: heated seats, automatic bidet features with water temperature and pressure controls. There was a side panel control on the toilet that reminded me of the control panel in an airline cockpit. I only saw these two extremes in Japan – high tech and squat john. I didn’t see any “normal” toilets. This contradistinction of old and new is normal to the Japanese. No one bats an eye at its seeming contradiction. It is thus that the Japanese have been able to match the West in technological development, yet retain their distinctiveness as a truly unique culture.

In 1982 my family – spouse Margaret, daughter Phoebe then 14, and son Jake, then 11 - moved to Hiroo, a residential section near the Ginza section Tokyo. One of the first actions we took was to buy a television set from Mitsukoshi department store in the Ginza shopping and entertainment district. “What day would you like the television delivered?” said the sales person “What day? Uh… how about tomorrow, Wednesday?” “Fine,” said the sales rep. “What time?” I said, “How about 9:00 AM?” “Excellent,” said the zealous sales person. At 8:55 AM the next day I happened to glance out the window of the house to the street. There parked in front of the house was the Mitsukoshi delivery truck, its driver waiting for 9:00 AM, the appointed time, to deliver the television set. Compared to our own more free wheeling society in the US, discipline and order seem to permeate Japanese life.

I recall my first briefing to the staff I inherited when I became CEO of Citicorp Credit KK in 1982. On the fourteenth floor of the Hibiya Kokusai Building, in Uchisaiwaicho, on Meiji Dori, just across the street from moat and wall surrounding the lush grounds of the Imperial Palace, I entered the large room set aside for staff events. There, standing at attention, reminding me of West Point plebes on the review field, were three rows of men and three rows women lined up behind them (the separation of the sexes is where the West Point analogy breaks down!). There were about ten employees per row: Citicorp Credit KK’s Tokyo employees.

The Japanese have terms based on a peculiar notion of American usage to describe these employees: the men were… sarimen (salary men) and the women were… ol’s (office ladies). “Ol,” is pronounced, “oh errr,” evidencing the well-known Japanese difficulty of pronouncing the English letter “ell.” The Japanese practice of adapting the English language in unusual ways is common. During the motorcycle trip, I was intrigued seeing many motorcyclists sporting leather clothing with the manufacturer name “Yellow Corn” displayed prominently. As a corollary to this phenomenon, sometimes the Japanese create an English sounding word that has unintended meaning to the native English speaker: Calpis, for example, is the brand name of a fruit drink sold through out Japan.

After recovering from the shock of seeing my new employees standing at attention, not to mention, segregated by sex, with the assistance of the company’s bilingual personnel manager, I spoke to them: “Hello, I’m Mr. Taylor. I moved here from Manila, Philippines last week to take this job. I am very happy to be here.” The personnel manager then spoke for what seemed like three minutes as he translated my five seconds long phrase. I learned that using a Japanese translator could result in well meaning - but sometimes calculating - intermediaries translating more than just the words I spoke.

The Japanese themselves seem to be obsessed with the uniqueness of their own culture. This may be the notion that impels some “translators” to offer more information than that being explicitly conveyed by a foreigner. To my translator, I was a gaijin: literally, an “outside” person… as opposed to nihonjin, or Japanese person. Quite possibly, in the “Japanese mind” of the translator, as a gaijin, I didn’t appreciate the unique nature of Japanese culture and therefore elaboration of my simple, “Western” remarks was required. The idea of a special Japanese “uniqueness” has legitimacy. After all, the Japanese had very little interaction with foreigners over a 3000-year period before United States Admiral Perry forced open trade relations in 1868 using the threat of his well-armed gunboat anchored in Osaka harbor. It stands to reason than in this extended period, Japanese culture would develop some distinctive traits.

Unique culture or not, two weeks after first having addressed the company staff, and, after having determined that the loquacious company personnel manager’s intermediary role was more self-serving than earnest, I fired him. I made sure that his replacement understood that he was to represent me and not “interpret” me to the staff. I got along fine with that man, Tsuchida-san, and was able, with the help of some very capable and hard working Japanese staff members, to effectively accomplish the company’s business objectives during the three-year Japanese assignment.

In the mid 1980’s, while living in Japan, I studied the Japanese language at the office twice a week, one hour each session, for three years. I learned to speak instinctively about 500 words. With help from my teacher, an earnest lady in her sixties, I was able to give speeches, in Japanese, to the company staff. My effort to speak Japanese was generally appreciated by Japanese people. Conversely, I have heard from fluent “gaijin” Japanese speakers, that the better command they have of the language, the more wary of them Japanese become. It’s “cute” for the foreign executive to speak a few words. But, it’s something else again when the fluent, foreigner Japanese speaker pushes closer to the essence of what it means to be Japanese.

On my return to Japan in 2004 for the motorcycle trip I was in no danger of threatening the Japanese psyche with fluent speaking ability. I did, however, enjoy speaking what little Japanese I could remember. As I rode the motorcycle, words and expressions that I had since forgotten, popped into my head. I spoke the language often and experienced the usual surprised, but pleased, reactions from the locals.

The Japanese reaction to my height – I am 2 meters 1 centimeter tall –has been intriguing given the perspective granted me by three visits to Japan each roughly twenty years apart. I was first in Japan in 1963, shortly after my high school graduation. Everywhere I went in Japan, people – adults and children - gawked at me. Nearly twenty years later, when I came back as an executive, my height was a non-event in Tokyo. When I went to the countryside, however, I received the same attention – gawking and giggling - as I had two decades previously. This time, after yet another twenty years, country or city, no one took any interest in my height at all. If you are a sociologist looking for signs of Japanese growing sophistication and awareness of the world, my experience might have some meaning to you.

This Japanese motorcycle expedition was a return for me. On the Japan Air Lines flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo Narita, I had finished Nelson Demille’s great “return” novel about Vietnam, Up Country. Demille’s novel ties a contemporary manhunt in Vietnam to incidents experienced by the protagonist as a young infantryman during the Vietnam War, thirty years previously. Inspired by the concept of the novel, I thought that my own return, that of a former gaijin executive in Japan, returning to Japan twenty years later as a motorcyclist, was a sorry comparison to Demille’s story.

The motorcycle trip ended with Typhoon Takage. But, the trip also started with a typhoon. My Japan Airlines flight was supposed to land at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, having flown over eleven hours from Los Angeles, at about 5:00 pm local time on the 8th of October. In actuality, the aircraft touched down about 6:30 PM at Kansai Airport near Osaka, 350 miles west of Tokyo. The aircraft was diverted to Kansai due to a typhoon passing over Tokyo. After the pilot’s announcement of the plane’s diversion, from my left window seat in business class on the left side of the plane, I could see, as the Boeing 747 banked left, half of a perfect circle of cloud bands extending out several hundred kilometers. It was a spectacular sight.

I spent the night on an airport bench. Japan airlines gave me a sleeping bag (which I was told I could keep) and 40 thousand yen, and told me to make my own way to Tokyo. Next day I took the earliest train from Kansai airport to Osaka and caught the Shinkansen for the four-hour train ride to Tokyo station. I secured a taxi, directed the driver to the Sunshine Prince Hotel in Ikebukero, and met up with my riding friends a day late.

Malcolm Moore, a Kiwi and a thirty-year resident of Tokyo, organized the Japan motorcycle tour. Burt Richmond and Diane Fitzgerald, owners of Lotus Tours, in Chicago, extended the invitations, confirmed the participant list and handled administrative aspects of the tour. Japan tour participants Henry Black, Jim Hunter, Burt Richmond, and I had ridden with Malcolm and then eight year-old son, Sean, in Mongolia in 2002. Other Japan trip members included, Peter Burry, from Ireland, Mike Barnes and his pillion rider Marie from Britain, Lewis Shaw from Dallas, Diane Fitzgerald, Chuck Nichols, Park City, Utah, Jeff Goldberg, from Chicago, Illinois, Larry Stern, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Court Fisher from Trenton, New Jersey.

Malcolm’s sons Yuya and Sean rode pillion behind their Dad, Sean the first six days and Yuya the second six day period. Sean and Yuya were my “dictionary” during the trip. Whenever I had a Japanese language question I went to them.

Two of Malcolm’s Japanese friends were the support team. Yamazaki-san drove the chase vehicle, a medium sized camping bus, and Yasuhiro-san, a highly respected professional photographer specializing in motor sports photography, was the photographer.

Excepting the western hotels in Tokyo where we stayed at the beginning and end of the trip, we went traditional and roomed in Japanese ryokan and minshuku. We ate traditional Japanese meals – ornately prepared fish, rice and vegetables - on tatami mat floors. We slept on the floor on fluffy cotton futons. We washed while sitting on stools and then soaked in traditional Japanese ofuros (Japanese baths) and onsens (hot springs). We got used to shedding our shoes and boots before stepping on tatami mat floors, and using squat johns.

Along the way we painted kokeshi dolls, made paper from scratch, bungee jumped (well, not me), rode half way up Mt. Fuji, took a narrow gauge railway up the Kurobe Gorge, visited various museums including the fishing culture museum on Sado island and Honda’s race bike and race car collection east of Utsunomiya.

And… we rode motorcycles… good ones (not like the rusted pieces of cobbled-together iron we rode earlier in the year in Vietnam): on spectacularly engineered freeways, through 2000 meter long tunnels and over 500 meter long spans; over twisty mountain roads matching the best of Sardinia (the best sport biking roads I’ve ridden), and through busy city streets. We rode on the left side of the road, as is custom in Japan. Six of us rode Ducatis provided by Dacati Japan through an arrangement with Burt and Diane. Two, rode BMW’s and the rest of us were on rented Japanese bikes.

Malcolm, who led the group, was an experienced motorcycle racer. He rode a 650cc Suzuki mega scooter.

I loved my motorcycle: a Suzuki GSX 1400 “naked.” The GSX 1400 is not sold in the United States, but is available in Japan, Europe, and South Africa. This type of motorcycle – also called a “hooligan bike” - has high performance characteristics, but without the fairing and streamlined cowling that is found on sport bikes or sport touring motorcycles. The engine, transmission and other anatomical components are fully exposed – hence the nomenclature – “naked.” The seating position is more upright than comparably powered sport bikes, where the tummy and the tank are one. Because of the uncomfortable seating position of the sport bikes, high performance motorcycling has been difficult for inflexible old fogies like me. The “naked,” however, combines power and comfort to a degree that us racer wannabes but “nevercanbes” can enjoy the maximum power and performance experience of a motorcycle.

The smaller displacement “nakeds’ such as the Ducati Monster, are priced lower than fully faired equivalent bikes and are popular with younger riders. The large displacement ‘nakeds” are a relatively new phenomenon. Honda makes a big naked: the CBB1300, also not sold in the United States. BMW is introducing a high displacement naked motorcycle in 2005, which will be marketed in the United States, the K1200R. This motorcycle boasts of an outrageous 170 horsepower and 155 pound feet of torque. Largely because of my experience on the GSX 1400 in Japan, I called Mike Clark, the owner of BMW of Salt Lake, the other day and confirmed with him that my name is on the first K1200R that he gets.

Tour companion Mike Barnes, from near London, named my Suzuki “the beast.” 1400 cc’s, in line, transverse, vertical four cylinder engine, two exhausts, it had torque up the gazoo (120 pound feet) and horsepower (125 horse power) to spare. I could handle any twisty road, including the sharpest switchback turn, in 2nd gear, all between 4000 and 6000 rpm (redline 8000). I have never experienced such a smooth surge of power coming out of a switchback turn all without downshifting and then upshifting as is required on most of the other bikes I ride. On the straights I experienced awesome boosts of acceleration when I required it.

When I lived in Japan in the mid-80’s, my Citigroup boss, Division Executive for Consumer business, Ed Harshfield, lived in Hong Kong. Together we had worked a project the object of which was to have Citigroup acquire a Japanese bank, then considered to be an impossible task. We didn’t accomplish the task. 20 years later, though, Ed, no longer with Citigroup, was CEO of a Japanese bank majority owned by US interests – Aozora Bank. The day before my departure for the US, Ed hosted me to lunch in the bank’s boardroom and we talked old times.

Ironically, during my motorcycle trip, Citibank’s Private Banking operations were ousted from Japan by regulators for violation of various Japanese banking rules. Three days after I left Japan, Citi’s CEO, Chuck Prince traveled to Japan to apologize for his institution’s missteps. So, reflecting on Citi’s current situation, Ed and I talked “new times,” too.

I have little recollection of the return journey, except that I had had so much fish and rice over the previous two weeks, I glommed a Big Mac at Narita before the return flight home.

I liked Japan a lot in this “return.” Seeing the country from a motorcycle seat and staying mostly in traditional accommodations was a new experience in a familiar country where I had spent three years of my life twenty years earlier. The fact is that the Japanese are unique in the world community. Their “beehive” seems to work pretty well for them and offers, in the very least, an alternative competitive paradigm to the notion that the western way is the best way. As for me, I value the individualism for which we are known, and would find it hard to be a “conforming” Japanese. The Japanese manufacture great motorcycles and have wonderful roads on which to ride. I’d like to do another trip to Japan in 20 years… this time by “teleportation?”

Now, in January 2005, the snow is the best ever in the Wasatch. It’s time to ski. I have to get my minimum quota in of 40 times up on the mountain and I’m now only at 15. I also have to get plane reservations for the motorcycle ride in Turkey in May.