keefwaddo wrote: ↑29 Jun 2022, 3:21pm
Just as a point of reference: I live in Tokyo and our bikes are outside the garden on the street and never locked. When I take a train I lock the bike in some bike parking place. Once had the light stolen. When we tour in Japan we hardly ever lock the bikes even if we go off hiking for a few hours.
Living in Japan has it's serious negatives, though lack of petty crime is very nice.
I was in Kyoto in the mid-1990s and there was a guesthouse used by not-that-youngish westerners, who routinely nicked bikes from the station. So I was informed chatting to one of them. All the bikes were unlocked. The guesthouse was in the only street dirty with litter in the entire city, and was regularly visited by the police.
On reflection, I decided to stay at a wooden ryokan (inn) elsewhere: the building being of wood was handy for the 3.5 Richter scale earthquake the next day. Not serious - I thought it was a lorry passing at first - until I noticed the tea cup and saucer jangling for about 45 seconds. It made the Tokyo English language newspaper, but was not very serious.
Re bike security, I am pretty disgusted that there are two crims who prey on bikes outside Balham Sainsbury's in SW London. A friend of mine was having her hair done, when the hairdresser said: "Hold on, isn't that your bike?"
They were using portable angle grinders on her £3,000 e-bike. By the time she was crossing the street they were gone, along with the bike.
Talking to the market guys, they said bike thefts happened all the time. That they targeted expensive bikes and that they had threatened anyone who attempted to intervene with the angle grinder.
"How many months has this been going on?" I asked.
"Months? It has been going on for years and the police could not care less."
