Approach Mukōgaoka-yūen, North or South, and you cannot avoid a whole Japan of parked bicycles. Station plantations of them. Station fields of them. For which you pay your bikeparking ticket and leave until return.

Arriving bikes. Departing bikes. Corridors of bikes.

Rail-track bikes. Under the highway bikes. Off to the stores bikes.

Student bikes. High school bikes.

Male rider with girlfriend seated side-saddle bikes.

Child on two or three-wheeler bikes.

Bikes.

More bikes.

Yet more bikes.

RAVE

How could you not be in favour of Japan as a bike-country: ecobenefits, no carbon footprint (or pedal-print), reduction of road traffic, easy storage, an aid to physical health and fitness.

If you are off shopping, in the immediate case in Mukōgaokayūen, then you can carry purchases in either of the two baskets fore and aft.

Given Japan's reputation as a high-price economy, domestic bikes are astonishingly cheap.

Family bike outings, along a large river like the Tamagawa or a small one like that in Mukōgaoka, can be a lift to the spirits. The Tama even has a special riverside pathway (also used by joggers and strollers). Relaxation. Not-on-the-train Japan.

Sometimes en route to or from the station, you catch the sunlight on the bike handles with the effect of a whole sea of metallic shimmer.

One affecting sight is the (usually older) bike-man who collects cans. Time and again you see a bike looking like some outlandish Michelin-tire phenomenon, a bloated Kitty Hawk. Cans in huge sacks being taken to a nook or street recess to be flattened and then cashed in for recycling.

The ward authorities are pretty good about bike-management. Each bike has to be registered with due sticker. Given any illegal bike-parking (and there used to be plenty around Mukōgaoka-yūen station), a truck comes round to collect all offenders. Handlebar to handlebar, wheel to wheel, they are piled up like some vehicle convict-row. And it costs a fair number of yen to reclaim from the city dump-site. In all a bit of bike weed-clearance. Impressive.