I found a cool blog post about Jitensha while trying to google some photos of the inside of the shop, thought id share it
from here:
http://smr.there.net/?p=4
"Jitensha
Today I visited the bike temple. Just moments before I’d been standing in “Berkeley Sports”, laughing hard over the wolf and hydra model disc golf drivers I was buying for Mike’s birthday. Then I found myself inside Jitensha Studio, and felt pretty stupid to be standing there full of frisbees.
There were old Campagnolo cranks hanging on the wall under glass. I consider myself a bike geek, and conceptually this does little to turn me on, but it was done in the best possible way I can imagine. I stared at the fine Italian chain rings like they were distant ancestors, missing links. I compared the series of Japanese track seat posts like they were rare sea shells. I admired the lugged steel frames coated in Molteni orange, and it warmed my heart. I felt a glow from the art of the bicycle, presented in minimal, impactful splendor. Nothing was overdone; there was a rewarding balance to the place. Only a few bikes were presented, but close inspection showed that thorough thought had been placed into every piece of them.
Reading a bike frame and the way it’s configured becomes almost another language once you start paying attention. These bikes were love poems! They were odes to the vital soul of the simple machine.
Can a machine have a soul? I realize that I’ve come to think it can. I find it a controversial thought; am I sick with materialism? Has captialistic fetish warped my head? My bicycle has done so much for me lately.
The work bench at Jitensha is near the sales counter. Bike tools were arranged in a visual poem; cone wrenches and spanners sat in a line like leaves on a tree. There was a lovely Eisentraut on the stand there, with a crystal clean drivetrain; it looked new, yet the seat was worn and scuffed, like a favorite pair of shoes, from what must have been thousands of miles on the road.
Two thoughts struck me: The first was that I needed to ride my bike more. The second was that it needed a good cleaning. I felt like running home and sanitizing my chain, degreasing my casette; I’d take my bike in the shower, get obsessive with soap and towels, try to make it shine. I need to polish the frame, I need to wipe off the salt encrusted on the stem, lube all points of friction. I need to take care of my bicycle like it’s cared for me. "