Hey from Japan

November 8, 2008

I don't want to get into the habit of commenting on non-bike issues, because I'm a one-trick pony and I won't pretend to be anything else...BUT this will be short and I'll tie it in to stuff we do. This is about things made in America, US jobs, the economy. I'm sure it'll be full of holes and beans, but...

I'm faraway now and watching CNN, as the only English television going, and after a day of Japanese, I need a little dose of it. Everybody's economy is going down the crapper, with Iceland leading the swirl, followed by us, and Japan's not far behind. Here, the biggest culprit seems to be (this is CNN's experts talking now,  not me) manufacturing jobs.

Here at the Tokyo Bicycle Show--not it's official name, but that's what it is--it's pretty obvious what's going on in bikes. Twenty years ago this show was full of Japanese makers. Three quarters of them are gone, and ninety percent of the rest have the name they've always had, but they don't actually make things in Japan anymore. Same with Italy, America, and it's even happening to Taiwan--and it's all going to China and Vietnam. Vietnam makes great luggage, and not just bike luggage. Complicated bags with zippered pockets inside of zippered pockets, with hidden sleeves inside the inner ones, and pleats and bellows, and corded seams and other things that, details that are first to go when price matters at all, but it doesn't when the cost of labor is so low.

There are some neat Japanese tools here, made by Kyoto tool. There are metric wrenches that have an open one end and a pivoting rachet box on the other, and the finish is super nice, and all excess metal has been zapped away with a hollow scoop or a strategically place hole, so that even in steel, they feel like they're titanium. There's a crescent wrench with calibrations and not a tenth of a millimeter of wobble in it. I'm sure Snap-On's equivalent is 80 percent as good. Is Snap-On still made in the states? I'm not sure. Probably.

OGK has some neat helmets, and that's a hard sequence of words for me to write, believe me. Japan's leading/largest/only helmet maker, but they're in China now.

Bridgestone is here, of course. Still Japan's biggest maker. Here at the show--it's a consumer show--they don't display the bread-n-butter bikes, but highlight the racy bikes, which say ANCHOR on the downtube. That name was born the last year Bstone USA existed, and we thought the same you're thinking. It is an odd name for a race bike, but A. Homer Hilsen and Sam Hillborne and Betty Foy beat it in the odd-name category, and in Japan, you know, it just doesn't matter. It's a noise, a sound, and a graphic; it's not the thing that keeps the ship in place.

Gilles Berthoud is making some nice saddles, but you can't afford them. The rivets are brass buttons with stainless inserts with allen heads, probably for---removal and reattachment? Not sure, but Gilles is a smart man, and I won't question that.

Anyway, back to the Not Made In China topic. We sell ONE thing made there: The $3 measuring tape. I didn't know it at the time, and bought 400 of them from a company called USA Tapes, or something really close to that. I should've asked, anyway.

I think the US carmakers should resurrect the body styles of the '30s and '40s, with the wheel wells and running boards and suicide doors and everthing EXACTLY that way, but make them smaller and electric. Use the old grey-greens and grey-blues, too--don't let the newby graphicallicists try to improve on anything visible.

The MUSA shorts cost us $28. The pants are about $34. The seersuckers, $43. It's hard to support made in USA when Bean and everybody else sell shorts with more features and equal or better quality for 2/3 of OUR COST, and about 1/3 of our retail.
Good luck, Barack. But let me point out: Our seersucker has two pockets with buttons, and a pencil pocket. The pants and shorts really are the best bottoms for riding, ever, and you can wear them as your dailies, too. I wear MUSA bottoms at least 350 days a year and have for the last 4 years. Not too adventurous in the bottoms department.

This is not a good post. I just need the English words right now, mainly.

I went to the best store I've ever been in today. You have to like dogs, and probably you have to be there, but here's the site:

www.waterdoggarden.net

Also, the guy there plays music by Blind Boy Fuller. I hadn't heard of him before now, but he had the album in one of those Now Playing stances, plus I asked to confirm.
I just bought a cd.  THis is the kind of posting I hate...the rambling kind that assumes interest. No mas, just now.