Fixed!

I decided to have a look at the brakes myself, so i took the caliper off. The brake pads are almost new, but whoever changed them botched it. one of the two metal clips that help hold the pads in place hadnt been put in properly, and was being wedged against the disc, causing the nasty scraping noise and further damaging things.

you can see on the photos where the clip has been worn away. I filed off the sharp edges, and put the clips and the pads back in properly, and Voila! no horrible scraping noise! I just need to bleed the brakes now (the clip must have somehow been wedging the pad in more) and all will be well! :)

In answer to Kirsty's comment, the Garmin-compatible english language map of japan comes from a place called UpUpDown. Its not bad - has two mapsets, road/nav, and topo. on my particular gps, the topo can be overlaid over the roadmaps, providing a nice combo. The only thing that is a bummer is that it doesnt have street names.

One of my missions tomorrow is to get a better helmet. the one that came with the bike would be fine, except that its missing the visor. its also very secondhand looking. never a good thing in a helmet...

I'll leave you with my favourite page from the Saitama Prefectural Police Traffic Safety Textbook...


"You must not reel along drunkenly on the road, rush out in front of cars or interrupt other pedestrians"