.... I lived in Japan for a couple of years and while there I had a 400cc, shaft driven (!) baby-intruder. Road tax was prohibitive there and based on your engine capacity - 50-250, 250-500, 500-1000 and 1000+. To tax a 1000+cc bike was about UD$2000 for one year - hence all the little mid-cc'd oddities people occasionally import here.
Anyhoo, I lived worked with in a little town 50km or so east of central Tokyo called Yachimata - famous for its peanut crop, over insured gangster country homes which regularly burned down, and dangerous teenagers. One of my Japanese colleagues was being forced by his fiancee to give up his baby intruder so he sold it to me for a song and helped me sort out my license and all the rest of the paperwork. Over three years, I ended up doing around 50 000km. In my first week with it I got my one and only speeding ticket....
....a mile from home, rice paddies on my left flammable houses on my right and a gentle bend obscuring the rest of the road ahead. It was a 60km/h zone and I was doing 75 or so, and then the little black and white car with the red lights on top seemed to materialise out of nowhere. Very soon, I was in the back trying to give the two guys my details. Japanese cops, especially country ones will often give up in the face of language barriers (a friend of mine when he got caught used to fake a panic attack and shout 'TABEMASEN! TABEMASEN!' which means 'I don't eat!' to try to deter them). To their credit mine stuck with it. I'd swapped my kiwi license for a Japanese one and I duly presented it before their arched eyebrows. They read it and established that it was only endorsed for motorcycles and in the most English I'd gotten from them, the senior cop looked grumpily over his shoulder and grumbled "Bike-u onlee, mmm?"
"Yes sir" I replied.
"Hrumph. Get-u car neh!" was his verdict and I was sent on my way. I still have the license as a souvenir.
pic: Himeji Castle, the baby intruder and me- ten years younger
First time I've ever been zapped with the laser - the bit of the A13 I've been down a dozen million times and never seen a speed trap. Decelerating, in lala land slightly hungover and oh looky look it's mr plod with his phaser set for daylight robbery. Cop was rather nice actually - a gixxer thou' in his garage apparently - but still, wallet £60 lighter and license 3 points heavier. Dude reckoned he could've given me a ticket to court (71mph in a 50), but since I had no points... bless him. Ironically, he said he did send another biker to court for doing 103 in the same spot ... another teacher (yiz may call me 'Mr k1w1boy' or Sir 
)
was driving the Mrs car .... 
