Maintenance overalls

When my brother came to visit Japan he decided to get his buddy the Japanese baggy-worker-man-pants.  Basically pants that hug your calf and then fold over to form badass parachute pants.

While waiting for him to make his mind I browsed their assortment of maintenance-overalls as I like to call them, but called tsunagi つなぎ in Japanese.  I was really digging the pink one but decided to go with grey.

My friend and I doing the "standard" badass-Japanese-rebellious-youth-squatting-while-likely-smoking-a-cigarette pose.

Going to see Mt Fuji with my brother

It's the first time anyone in my family has come to Japan and the first and probably last time any of them would ride on the back of a motorcycle with me.  Since it was a once in a lifetime opportunity I decided to take my brother to go see Mt Fuji.

It was really cold so I gave him my winter gear and rode to where I park my van to go and get my leathers, which are significantly warmer than my summer gear I'm wearing at first.

For someone who is 5'7" with a 6'1 passenger I think I did a good job handling the bike.  It was much different than my usual 5'1"(156cm) passenger, but as long as he didn't move too much it was more or less the same.  Occasionally at stop lights he rocked the whole bike which was very annoying.

We stopped by a local festival, not really sure what was going on but for about 15 miles straight there were people walking the streets and tons of food stalls set up.  We ate some pretty tasty yakitory (chicken kebabs more or less) and yakisoba (fried soba noodles).  We got off to a late start so we were pretty happy to finally eat something.

About 3/4 of the way there he was miserable, freezing, and grumpy. I managed to capture his excitement while standing by a freezing cold stream.

We finally got to Lake Yamanaka where you can see the base of Mt. Fuji on the left.  Usually you can see a lot more, but Fuji was pretty cloudy this time....

So I caught my brother in a pic with just the base.  He was too cold at this point to try and get any closer, so we called it a day and headed back home.

Then when we got home my girlfriend decided to try on my leathers ^^  Slowly trying to get her to learn how to ride.  She looks pretty happy here so maybe it's working? :-D

Backup gas tank for the NSR MC28

Since I decided to go all out and get a full set of race fairings from Tyga Performance, to preserve the original fairings for re-sale or street use, I figured I might as well replace the gas tank as well.

I searched all around for weeks, even looking at eBay UK since the UK seems to have a lot of NSR 250 riders.  I even considered going for an MC21 tank, since they are significantly cheaper, and then modding it to fit on the MC28 bike.


But then I found this awesome deal on yahoo auction!

¥15,900 and ¥1,890 for shipping

In the listing pictures you can see a small dent on the left side and a bit of rust on the inside of the tank, and with that price it still seemed  a little too good to be true.

I went back and forth e-mailing the seller asking about the condition of the tank, etc and I got a more recent image of the rust, which still doesn't look that bad.

And much to my surprise when the tank came with overnight shipping today it was in better condition than I thought it would be.  I couldn't get a good picture of the inside of the tank but I'll try to get a good before/after when cleaning it out.

Now all I have to do is clean it out and swap it with my current tank.  Probably somewhere down the line I'll also be sanding it down and painting it, but I can leave that until I decide what colour or design I'll make my new fairings when they come in.

For now I'll just be riding white on white on white.

Registering the Ninja400R

So today is the day I decide to transfer the bike into my name.  I wake  up nice and early, about 8am, so that I can make it to the place by 9am, thinking it will all be over by 10am.

Since my brother, Sam, is visiting I decide to bring him along and take him on his first ride with me.  It starts off alright, a bit cold, but I soon got a feel for how the bike handles in city traffic.  The brakes feel a little weak, but that's partly due to the fact that my forearms still hurt from rock climbing on Sunday.

We make it there safe and it's time to go through the process of changing the Shaken 車検 and getting a new license plate.   I get to the first counter and pay my ￥20 for my documents, and I'm told to go to the next window.  When I get there the same guy runs over to the new counter (20 feet away) and is there to serve me.... weird.  So I hand him my license plate, he stamps something and tells me to go to the next building.

I line up and get called immediately, it's still early and not many people here today.  First thing she asks me is if I have my Jyuminhyou 住民票, which is basically an official document proving your residency in Japan.  With my luck I FORGOT IT.... but remember that I might have one extra copy at my house, a 25 minute ride one-way at best.

I head back home with Sam as fast as possible..... with no license plate on the bike, grab the last remaining document....phew... and head back to the office...still with no license plate.

I fill out all the forms and read a particular line where I have to fill my name into boxes, and my name is too long.  I'm sent an another round across the lot, to get a special form for extra boxes to fill out the remainder of my name, pay another ￥20, and trek back over to the second building again.

They make me wait a little and hand me my new Shaken 車検 and send me back to the first building where I get my new license place ￥520.

I'm done at around 11:30am and I'm able to make it into work at 12:30pm.

I'm so glad I didn't get caught by the cops with no license plate, because knowing Japanese police they would lecture me about how not having a license plate is somehow not safe or something (albeit riding a registered vehicle).... :-/

I really don't want to go to register any more vehicles ever again.....but at least it was cheap....

Getting an MFJ helmet

So according to race guidelines you need certain helmets to be able to race.  I thought my Shoei RF1100 (Snell) would be good enough but for some reason it wasn't at the list at Tsukuba.

So since I'm familiar with the helmet I picked the Japanese model the XR1100, which is more or less the same helmet..... more like exactly the same helmet.

It fits a little tighter and will probably need to be worn quite a bit before it will be more bearable from compressing the inserts a bit, but at the moment its a bit tight.

Decided on a Ninja 400R

So I've done A LOT of internet window shopping for bikes and finally decided on one.  I jumped around from Duke 200 to Katana 400 to Katana 600 to Ninja 600 to a million other bikes.

Then finally landed firmly on the Ninja 400.  Going to get it through the auction at ApexMoto and I'm pretty excited.