Living Car Free - car free in japan

any hints tips recommendations.

possibly moving from car free in Australia to car free in Osaka. Share your stories if you can please!

Never been, but I think it would be really easy. Japan's bullet-train is extremely efficient, and the country is geographically compact with a high pop density. I would imagine being car-free in Japan would be pretty easy.

I lived in rural Japan (small town in Kumamoto), so I don't know how applicable this is to Osaka, but I found the country to be very bicycle friendly. Many school children bicycled to school in my area, and the drivers were very courteous. In addition, they have a pretty good train system. I can't imagine you will have much of a problem.

Don't know much about the Osaka area in particular, but after living in Japan off and on for a total of over five years and having a Japanese wife, I can say that their mass transit system is excellent.

As for cycling, yes there are quite a few but most of them are very young or very old and stick to the sidewalk. From what I've seen road cycling, driver attitudes tend to be better than what is typically found in the US, but they have their fair share of the impatient types.

Tondemo arimasen!

No problem.

It's really hard to try and get and drive a car in Japan. You will have no problem being car free.

I do recomend you take theft very seriously. Even if you have a free junker, it will get stolen. If you have a decent bike, you want a serious lock, and to do so properly (wheels and all), as well as keep track of it's numbers (not that the police will ever find it, but they'll respect you more for it, and they will check numbers on abandoned bikes they collect).

Also keep in mind for a country where everyone grows up riding bikes and where bikes are a common mode of transportation even for business men, very few people know how to ride bikes or share the road etc in a way one would suspect (this sounds silly but watch out for roaring drunk bicycle riders).

Lock, lock, lock, your bike.

Actually, a car is a real handicap in Japan. I lived in Yokohama for over 2 years without a car and felt sorry for my friends who had bought cars. The trains and buses are great. I didn't even really need a bike.

You wont need one at all, a lot of supermarkets will deliver your groceries free if you spend above a certain amount (4000 Yen, about AUD50.00). The people on bikes are complete dick heads though. They have no common sense what-so-ever and texting whilst riding at 8 in the morning with about 16,000,000 people all in motion is common. Another thing is nobody obeys the traffic laws so dont be surprised, just say to yourself 'When in Rome'

Still, bikes are cheap here, you can get it registered for about AUD8.00 and as long as its locked it will be fine. They usually get stolen by drunk salary men who cant be bothered to walk home last thing at night, they are looking for bikes not locked at all, they wont even try if its locked.