New bicycle laws went into effect in April of this year, in an effort to make cycling safer. In 2024, there were over 67,000 bicycle related traffic accidents in Japan. Under the new system, police are able to issue on-the-spot tickets, incurring fines for 113 cycling offenses to cyclists 16 and over. If you are issued a ticket under the new system, you have eight days to pay the fine in cash at a bank or post office.
Already criminals are at work, though! There have been multiple incidents of scammers all over Japan, posing as police officers, who stop bicycle riders and demand the fine be paid on the spot. If this happens to you, don’t pay! Real police officers will be wearing uniforms and will issue a ticket, but they do not collect money from the bicycle riders.
One of the new rules that seems to be in the gray area is failure to use arm signals before making a turn. The new rules require cyclists to indicate a turn by extending the arm for a turn in that direction, or a bent arm with finger tips upward for a turn in the other direction, with a fine of 5000 yen for failure to comply. Another rule requires both hands on the handlebars for safety. Sounds like it is hard to be in compliance with the law, and easy for a scammer to try to get your money.
There have been quite a few reports of these scammers, but I haven’t read about any of them getting caught yet.
Japan might be the only country that requires married couples (both partners Japanese) to have the same family name. (Note, this law applies to Japanese couples, not foreign residents). Only about 5% of Japanese husbands take the surname of their wife. When a wife’s family has no male heir to carry on the family name is one instance when a husband may take a wife’s family name.
One nongovernmental organization, Asuniwa, has turned to an unconventional idea - encouraging people to marry someone with the same family name. Although the organization advocates for optional separate surnames for couples, it has launched the Same Surname Marriage Campaign. The campaign has started by hosting matchmaking events (with IBJ, a matchmaking party company), limited to people with the same name. This really only works for people with names such as Sato, Suzuki, Takahashi, Tanaka, or other common names.
An Asuwina survey conducted in 2025 estimates that about 587,000 people in common law marriage situations would legally marry if separate surnames were an option. I’m sure there are many people who have no issue with changing their surnames, but it is a burden for the person who has to do the changing. The Same Surname Marriage Campaign sounds like an option for those with common surnames who don’t want to change names after marriage.
This is the house I lived in until I went away to college. I made the chart on graph paper at some unknown point in my life and finished the cross stitch since I’ve been in Japan. Now it is finish finished and ready to hang on a tension rod.
The stitchers are making incredibly creative progress with their gardens. I am so happy to see what they are doing.
Tea time
I’m still trying to make things out of scraps and leftovers. I stitched the first layer of some beady fobs.
Tale of Genji progress - I’m working on the backstitching/outlining and it’s going slowly.
A while back, I visited this temple in Shizuoka City with some friends. The temple was built as a family temple for Ujitera, the elder brother of Yoshimoto Imagawa in 1536. On the temple grounds, Imagawa Shrine enshrines both Lord Yoshimoto and Lord Ujiteru. The temple buildings are only open to the public two days a year, May 19 and one day in the fall. We walked around the grounds and made plans to come back on May 19 to see inside.
The following pictures are from the May 19 visit.
The dragon above is on the ceiling.
I am so glad we were able to visit on the day the temple was open to the public!
