Saturday, September 12, 2026 : Why They've Been There All Those Years
© 安岡喜晴 (JoyShine)
Today I went to a bike shop to get a flat tire fixed.
Strangely enough, my wife's bike had gotten a flat at the same time.
Mine was the back tire.
Hers was the front.
First, we went to a big chain bike shop.
They looked at my wife's bike and said,
"The whole front tire needs to be replaced."
The total for both of us would have been over 10,000 yen.
On top of that, they said, "Please come back and pick them up another day."
That's when I suddenly thought of what happened at the dentist.
A while ago, a dentist told me,
"You need surgery."
"We'll have to put in an implant."
But when I tried a dentist near my home, I was told,
"This? I can fix this."
In the end, I never had the surgery or the implant,
and now it's completely healed.
So we decided to try one more shop.
This time, it was a small independent bike shop that's been around for a long time.
They looked at our bikes and fixed them on the spot.
"There's no puncture. The valves probably got old and the air leaked out."
They replaced the valves, and the total for both of us was 2,200 yen.
That was quite a lesson.
A big chain that draws a lot of customers isn't always the best.
When an independent owner has run a shop in the same spot for years,
there's a reason they've been there all those years.
With our bikes fixed, we rode straight from there to the Kamo River.
Blue sky.
The sound of the river.
People sitting on the riverbank.
Some people on the bank were sitting alone, and there were couples too.
I wondered what they were all thinking about as they looked at the river.
We crossed the Kamo River and rode north on Kawabata Street.
We stopped at Iroakari.
For drinks, we had apple juice and white peach juice.
The inside is bright and clean, and the food is delicious too.
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100 out of 100.