【知る人ぞ知るサイクルショップ】イケてる自転車に乗って両国に行こう！

【知る人ぞ知るサイクルショップ】イケてる自転車に乗って両国に行こう！

Hello, TOKYO LOCAL VOICE is an audio media outlet that travels to various shops, mainly in Tokyo, and delivers their opinions. Today, we’re visiting JD Cycle Tech, located in Ryogoku, Sumida Ward, Tokyo. James-san, nice to meet you. First, please introduce yourself. My name is Diion James. I currently run a bicycle shop in Ryogoku, but I originally moved here from Arizona, USA. I’ve been here for about eight years. What did you do while you were in Arizona? At the time, I worked part-time at a Japanese restaurant and also worked part-time as an interpreter . Japan has always been a familiar place to me . Your mother is originally Japanese, but we were born and raised in the United States, and your mother has American citizenship. Your family has roots in both the United States and Japan , and your mother’s sister and others live nearby. Oh, I see. I’ve never heard that before. Your mother’s family home is in Edagawa, Koto Ward, right? So it’s pretty close, or rather, quite close. It’s close. James and I used to play a sport called cycle soccer in college, and I don’t think many of you know this, but he really helped me out with that, making my bike frame . It’s still hanging there. The purple is amazing! Once you assemble the handlebars and stuff, it ‘s like, oh yeah! It brings back memories. Looking at it now, I think it was well made, so thank you so much. No, no, I’m really grateful for all the lessons I learned. Thank you. Has the shop itself been open for eight years? When I came to Japan, I had never worked in a bike shop. When I came here, I imagined riding my bike in Tokyo and working in a bike shop, and I thought it would be great. I was really just tinkering with bikes as a hobby, so I saw a movie and thought this would be a great dream. So I came to Japan , and I went to all kinds of bike shops, and I bought used bikes for starters . I went to a lot of bike shops, but I didn’t have any experience, so some were happy and some were terrible . In the end , I found a bike shop that bought and sold used bikes, and that’s where I got the job. So you came to Japan, worked there, then went independent and are now doing what you’re doing? When I was working there part-time, there was a neighbor who was a bicycle enthusiast and he was riding a fixed gear frame, a custom-made fixed gear frame, and I was like, “Wow, amazing!” It had all this kanji in gold writing, it was candy red, and I was like, “Wow, this is an amazing fixed gear , where is it from?” and he said, “No, it’s custom-made,” and I was like, “Do things like that even exist?” So he offered to take me, and I took him to a place that made those kinds of bikes, and I thought, “Ah, this is it!” and I wanted to do that. I see, so I think that was probably around six months into it. I found that place, and then I worked hard for another six months or so to get a job there, and I went there often , and gradually I got to know the people there, and it was like, “Oh, here it is again, James,” and it gradually became that way, and somehow I ended up coming twice a week , and I was able to train at a place that made them , yeah. Was the bike that inspired you ridden by a Japanese person? That’s right. The person I met when I came to Tokyo? He’s still like an older brother to this day, and we’re really close . He has a house and a garage, and he’s so full of bikes that people wonder if he owns a bike shop. He’s the envy of all men. He also likes motorbikes and cars, and we’ve had these kinds of stories. He started out as a bike enthusiast, and he got into bikes, so it’s a little different , the way he tinkers with things, and the customization of cars and motorbikes, which is different from customizing bikes, so I’ve been watching that kind of thing. Rather than just buying parts and adding them, he ‘d talk about how to tinker with cheap parts and how to make them better, and how it’s different because he doesn’t have the money , and how this kind of oil is good, or this kind of processing is good, and so on, and we became really close. After work, I’d go over to his house and tinker with my bike, and we’d talk. It was really fun to feel like he was making something from scratch , and we really admire him. There’s no end to it. But it’s amazing that you’ve continued doing it without getting bored. I’m also the type of person who gets bored of something pretty quickly , so I haven’t gotten bored of cycling yet. And I ‘ll continue to do it in the future. You mentioned earlier that you thought cycling through Japanese cities was cool , but was there a movie or something that made you watch it? At first, I was into bicycles, and I loved riding fixed-gear bikes in Tokyo. I came from Phoenix, Arizona, and Tokyo is full of big buildings, and I enjoyed riding my bike around the stadium, but I wanted to do something more. I was initially torn about going to New York or somewhere like that. I wondered about San Francisco or New York, because those places are famous for being bicycle and fixed-gear bike riding. There’s a movie called “Ramen Girl.” When I saw that movie, it was about a foreign woman who moves to Japan with her boyfriend, breaks up with him, and ends up alone in Japan. She goes to a ramen shop crying, eats ramen, and is so moved that she wants to make ramen herself . The girl works hard at the ramen shop , trains , and struggles, but in the end she opens her own ramen shop and it starts to get a lot of customers. That kind of movie made me want to try out a bicycle like that in Japan. Were you drawn to bicycles, not ramen, during your childhood? Were you born in America? I was born in America and grew up there, but my mom’s parents lived in Tokyo, so I would come over there sometimes during summer vacation and play there, and then come back. I always spoke Japanese and English at home, and spoke English with my dad and Japanese with my mom. At university, I lived in a room with a Japanese person and studied Japanese a little at university, but although I could speak it, I couldn’t read or write it. So , since it would be a waste to start from scratch at university , there was a sort of exam first, and if I could get to that level, the next level up, that might be good, and even though I could speak it, I couldn’t read or write it, so even when I went to the next level up, everyone had to write their name, whether it was in katakana or hiragana, and I couldn’t even do that. So, I was like, “Huh?”, but I could speak it So it was a little bit half-hearted, and when that didn’t go very well , I thought, Oh well, I’ll quit, and so I did. That’s right, from the first time I met him he was very fluent in Japanese, and he used Japanese quite a bit at home with his family and also in the Japanese lessons he was doing part-time, and the owner was Japanese , so he served Japanese cuisine, and Arizona often has a lot of baseball training camps and baseball players come, so he wanted staff who could speak Japanese properly, and when Japanese customers came he was able to handle them well, and so it was really thanks to him that I was asked, “Is there anything you like?” and I said yes , and so I really did go to his house after work and we would talk about these things, and I started to love cooking, and when I showed him my cookbooks he said, “ This is art,” and he told me to find something I like and turn it into art, so I studied all sorts of things like that , and then bicycles…? (Any interests?) I thought you liked cycling, so I thought I’d try my best at it. There are actually a lot of people who want to do something but can’t turn their passion into a job, right? Yes, yes, really. At the time, I wasn’t married and didn’t have any children, so I thought that this would be the best time for me to try my best, and I thought this was my chance. After all, when you look at your family and your children, it ‘s hard to be all by yourself, right? It’s the same now, of course, but you want to work hard for your family , but you can’t be 100% yourself, right? So I think the timing was just right. So you originally have roots in Japan, and you’re in this nearby area, but was there a reason why you set up shop in Ryogoku? It was a bit of luck too, I’d always thought this side of Tokyo was good, this east side, or rather , the reason is that the roads are straight, it’s not cluttered, so it was the most pleasant place to ride a bike . If I were to open a shop in this area, I wanted it to be a place where people would feel comfortable riding a bike, a place where people would come and visit. When I got there, I was worried that I might get lost. I thought this would be a good place to take that road, so I was looking around this area of ​​Sumida Ward, looking at places like Midori and Kikugawa, and by chance this property was available. やんやんや English: This area is close to the Skytree, and recently I’ve heard a lot about Kiyosumi Shirakawa, a quiet coffee town that I like. Everyone in the neighborhood gets along well, and it’s the shop’s workshop . Do you have any particular preferences? It’s small, and everyone says how you can do this in such a small space , but I guess you have to think carefully about how to do it in such a small space. If it were spacious, you could place various machines like this and it would be easier, but then you have to think carefully about how much you can do in this space, so you put this tool here, and this machine here, and see if you can do something with it. The interior is like, all the boys will love it, and if it were any smaller, I don’t think you could do anything. It ‘s really just the right size, and you can do as much as you can within reach, and it’s like an Iron Man movie, and the interior really conveys that you’re going to make something. What do you want to do with the shop in the future? I try to make custom-made bicycles as much as possible , and when you make those, the prices of bicycles are gradually increasing. A lot of bicycles are made in Taiwan. Taiwan has a lot of factories like that, and when they want to mass-produce bicycles, they go to Taiwan. Even though they’re made in Taiwanese factories, the prices are close to our custom-made products. Americans create brands, manufacture them in Taiwan, and then bring the bicycles to America. Then there’s tariffs and shipping costs. And with the weak yen , when you see popular American brands being sold in Japan, they’re incredibly expensive. If they’re made in Taiwan and the prices are this high, I’d rather have a Japanese bicycle manufacturer make them . Looking at things like that , I think, “Well, I guess a good brand image, a slightly unusual shape, that’s nice.” My style is definitely Japanese, but maybe there’s also a bit of an American feel to it . When you make something , the person who makes it gets into it. For example, when a Japanese person makes a car, it looks like a Japanese car. When an American person makes a car, it looks like an American car. When you look at custom cars, you can see that Americans are imitating JDM, for example.やにしかんじです。 English: It’s not really JDM, but it has come back to Japan and changed a bit , and bicycles have something of that kind of feel. I would like people to make things that are uniquely my own , so recently I’ve been making custom-made bicycles with a Japanese feel, but I’m also using a factory in Taiwan to try to keep the prices as low as possible, trying to make good bikes as cheaply as possible. I’m thinking of city bikes in Japan, bikes that are a bit Tokyo-style, with slightly thicker overseas-style , mountain-style tires, and something a bit like myself. I’m also making cheaper frames for people who are looking for a bit more in the future, or who are bike lovers, and I ‘d like to make things like that , and I’d like to recommend fixed gear bikes, but it’s not just fixed gear bikes, you know? I also have a bit of a thing for road bikes, and this is what you would call road bike geometry, but with thicker tires. If you’d like to order one, please contact me at this shop. What’s your daily routine, or what kind of day do you spend? Quite recently, they’ve been busy making and painting frames at the Taiwanese factory , and they’re only just arriving, so it’s been pretty hectic and they’re not very organized, so when I wake up in the morning I usually think I have to write it down , and recently I’ve been thinking about writing it down, and today I’ll do this, this, this, and as I do that, I gradually forget about it, and the other day a customer said, “Oh, I’m going to go get a frame,” and said it was okay to come, but they mistook him for another customer, and the customer who was coming in was going to have their bicycle wheel assembled, which is done by hand, and they had promised to hand it over to him along with the frame , but they mistook him for another customer and said, “Oh, it’s okay, it’s okay,” and when he came, they were like, “What!? ” and so on and so forth, I had no choice but to prepare the frame, and since I live in Kawasaki, It’s my fault, I’ll send it once it’s assembled, no, no, I’ll pay the shipping , no, no, of course it was a mistake so don’t worry about the shipping, it ‘s all like that and I feel like I have to do something about it, so I end up writing it down properly, organizing it somehow, and when I erase it it feels good, like, yes, yes, I did it, and gradually I start to want to do it faster, and really writing it down on paper makes me wonder what the future holds for this store in 5, 10 years’ time? What are your dreams, James? We would like to have a place that is a little bigger, and we would like a place where we can paint , and we can do repairs and painting and things like that, but we would also like a paint booth where we can paint the entire frame, and it would be a little bigger, like a factory/shop where we can do bicycles from 0 to 1, and in a store, rather than going to the store and having things lined up, it’s better to have people come and have them made, that kind of atmosphere is good, and we don’t have many products lined up, which is also why we are small, and we come and talk, and we decide what kind of thing you want, and we assemble it from scratch , although we are not a custom shop, but we do of course do puncture repairs for ordinary neighborhood mamachari bikes, such as when someone has a flat on their bike, or when they want to change the handlebars, and of course there are people who don’t like to work on mamachari bikes because we make these kinds of bikes, or people who don’t like to do things that they can’t do because it’s a bike , and there are a lot of bike shops that don’t do that kind of thing, and they come to us even for a puncture repair, saying they do it because they do so much at the bike shop, so they can do it for you, Even if they don’t make it, stylish bicycles don’t do mamachari bikes, they do everything from local puncture repairs to custom frames, and I think it’s great that they have such a wide range of services, so thank you. I ‘d like to know what shops James himself recommends, or even if they’re not related to bicycles at all, a shop? Is it in this neighborhood? It could be in the neighborhood , or maybe not, but there’s a kebab shop that’s become popular in Tokyo recently . Now that I ‘ve come to Japan and Tokyo, I was surprised at how many kebab shops there are. Kebab, I’d never heard of kebab before I came to Japan. Oh , I see. Why are there so many kebab shops? Have you tried one yet? I thought it wasn’t very tasty, but I thought maybe I’d missed the point, so I thought I’d try it again in a few months, and when I ate it again, I thought, well, Arizona is close to Mexico, so there are a lot of tacos, and I was comparing it to that, but, no, it just didn’t feel right. A friend of mine who runs a restaurant in Kuramae told me about a delicious place here in Akihabara, and it’s open 24 hours a day, every day. Even if you go in the middle of the night on a Saturday, there’s already a huge line, but if you’re lucky , you can go, it’s pretty quick, cheap, and really delicious. It’s spicy, though. You can choose the level of spiciness, and I tried a little of everything, but I think a little spiciness tastes better. Is there a place like this in Akihabara? “Moses’ Kebab” is really good, you should definitely go. I think I’ll go there on my way home. I tried it, and someone recommended it to me, and it was delicious! My wife ate about 10 of them in a week and was surprised . They’re so delicious! If anyone watching has anything to say, please do your best. I’m looking forward to seeing them grow in various ways. Thank you . I’ll keep on working hard, so please support me. Please subscribe to my channel and give it a high rating. Thank you, James! Thank you . Thank you very much.

📍 J.D. Cycle Tech | 東京都墨田区両国
日本の国技相撲の聖地である両国。そんな歴史ある街に店舗を構える自転車屋。日本らしさとアメリカらしさをバランスよく融合させた雰囲気は唯一無二のもの。東京の街をカッコよく自転車で駆け抜けてみませんか？
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TOKYO LOCAL VOICEは、東京を中心に様々な店舗に足を運び、店舗で働く人の歴史や夢、人柄に触れてその声を届けていきます。自分の育った街、住んでいる街をより好きになってくれたら嬉しいです。

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