Pimp my pushbike

A story I did this summer on “decochari” (or dekochari). Decochari is short for “decorated charinko (bike)”. It’s like the crazy customized trucks they have here – but bicyles, and the owners are too young to have driving licences.

It was quite a shoot. Must have been 35C all afternoon which turned straight into a thunderstorm and the heavens opened. I only got a handful of night shots because the bikes short out with a few spots of rain!

Kazuki Abe (18) with his decochari customized bicycle. The bicycle took 7 months to make. “There are only 10 people in our national decochari club. We need to try harder.” . . .

Dekochari bike

Yuji Yoshida (14) riding his decochari customized bicycle. “It’s got 50 lights on there now. The battery runs out after about 30 minutes.” . . .

Decochari bicycle

Easy riders . . .

Japanese customized bikes

A customized truck. The bicycles are smaller versions.

Dekosha customized truck

A sign in a customized truck. It says “Hold onto the steering wheel the way you hold the woman you love: softly and with both hands.”

Here’s a link to all the photos:  Dekochari customized bicycles

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 10:49 pm. It is filed under my photos and tagged with bikes, decochari. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.