Of course I went to Roppongi! One of my favorite pasttimes was to sit in a bar, sip gin tonic and watch the never ending stream of dolled-up girls coming up the stairs from the subway station, ready to party! I think I got there at the end of '88, a couple of months later the Emperor died and the country came to a standstill. No jobs, no work, no money, at least for us foreigners. I lived in Kasai in Yoshida Guesthouse, a place of ill repute, full of foreigners and all the problems that came with them. I once watched a bloody fistfight between some Japanese karate guy who thought he could kick gaijin ass. The fight went over all the floors and the fighters slipped because of the blood on the floor. A British guy defended the honor of the foreigners and finally got the karate guy out of the building before the police came. It was like watching a cage fight live. Those were the days, I remember them fondlt but they're definitely in the past.
You're right, I didn't see the thread is about the MT-07 which I'd prefer over the MT-09 but only here in Thailand.
Do you remember the bosozoku, the crazies on their modified bikes? The police would follow them just to keep them in check. In the US they probably would have tried to stop them and it would have been a bloodbath; in Japan they just follow them and things stay controlled.
I never rode a big bike in Tokyo but I managed an artist and we had to transport his large sculpture through the city to the exhibition. I rented a flatbed truck with a crane and since nobody else wanted to drive I had to - right hand drive for the first time, shift on the left, through traffic looking like ants on an anthill with no idea of direction. It was an adventure!
Hope we haven't hijacked the thread too much! Well most bikes are made in japan, that's the connection!