Bikes In Japan

[13Beast]

Hi guys,

We all know the awesome prices that can be had for those of us lucky to be living in Japan and buying local Japanese performance turbo cars. I've checked out www.carsensor.net and www.goo-net.com/english.

I also ride as well, and was curious to see if anyone here knows much about how much savings can be had in owning a 600cc or greater, GSXR/CBR/R1/Ninja whilst living in Japan. Do you know what they sell for? Or, any Jap bike websites where I can see them for sale and can search through (similar to carsensor and goo)?

[ausdrift]

I dont really know what you mean about savings to be had, but I bought a bike here and did the shaken on it myself (big savings to be had, and not as hard as you think). Managed to get a mint '98 Honda CB400SF for around Y250,000 with only 12,000kms on it.

I found it through www.goobike.com , which is the bike version of goo. Anything over about 10-20,000kms and they drop in price, just like the psycological 100,000km limit on car buying here.

just be prapared to wade through some crap and deal with the occasional blue collar wanker. Luckily the shop I finally bought mine from was proffesional, clean and the guy even spoke (Very) minimal English, but I reccomend taking a native friend along.

as for ownership stuff, shaken (biannually) cost me about Y30,000, insurance for a year was Y50,000 and I think I got tax coming in April, but I dont know how much that will be.

for more info try www.gaijinriders.com

[13Beast]

Thanks for the heads up. I've checked out the bike market on goobike and they seem horribly overpriced... is that normal?

It seems you can't get anything gsxr, zxr ninja, r1/r6 or cbr600/900/1000 for under 450,000 yen. To get anything 2000 or later, and its mega-bucks. For the price of an S15 or low kms R33 GTR, I'll be lucky to get a k1 or newer GSXR-600

Do you have to pay a regular (and just as expensive shaken) on bikes? Obviously no cost of parking space as would be needed with a car?

I noticed people talk about bikes being 'full power/euro spec' or otherwise 'jap spec'. Does this mean all the sports bikes are detuned/slower than the equivalent models we get imported here to Australia?

[Streeter]

if you want to use a bike and save money 250cc is where its at. Ive been riding here for about 4-5 years. 250cc no shaken! yearly reg is ~8k yen. bigger bikes can be pretty pricey to buy and shaken etc is extra cost. And yeah alot of them are detuned alot but I think it depends on the model.

Depends what you want the bike for, after 4 years on the roads here those 250cc scooters like the Forza start to make alot of sense. Only reason Im still on my trusty CBR is cause they are so cheap.

bikes Ive owned

Kawasaki 250ZZR 40k yen (complete pile of poo but did 20k kms with out too much trouble and sold it for 40k yen when I had enough of it)

Suzuki 250cc Bandit. 40k yen (pile of crap, ran like shit and lost money on it. spent about 40k getting it running and sold it for 40k not long after)

Honda CBR 250 RR 90k yen (awesome bike, 30k kms later and still rocking) Slow and no real luggage capacity... but great for lane splitting which is a must in japan.