Back in 1980, a German friend living in Japan at the time would go out walking at night, as was his wont anywhere. He came across a fridge at the gomi[1] which he felt was in good working order, so he went back the next day with his bicycle, in the dead of night as there’d be no traffic around, loaded the fridge onto the outer pedal, tilted the bike towards his body, and wheeled it home that way. A night patrol policeman happened to come along, and stopped him for questioning, as he simply couldn’t believe that a gaijin[2], supposed to be wealthy or wealthier than the locals, would want to take something a local had thrown out.
Fast forward to 1993 when I went to visit an Englishman teaching English out there. He had three bicycles. I asked him what he wanted three bicycles for, as he couldn’t ride all three at the same time. He said as he was a peripatetic teacher cycling from school to school, it was useful to have a spare bike or two should one of them develop a puncture, as he could just abandon it at home and ride the spare one, leaving the repairs to be done at the weekend. They were free of charge, anyway, as he’d got them from the gomi.
He also had a three-piece leather suite and a vacuum cleaner, all from the gomi. Towards the end of my six-week stay, he said, “The vacuum cleaner is not sucking well. It’s time for another visit to the gomi.”
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