Japanese Culture: Mamachari

Since the blog topic was free choice among Japanese culture, it was hard for me to decide what to write about. Also, I wanted write about something that is not really known by foreigners who have not came to Japan. However, I decided to introduce Mamachari (ママチャリ) since it is really popular in Japan.

Basically, Mamachari is a bycicle for wifes' who have small children. As you can see from the photo, Mamachari is electronic and have baskets to carrier children. The maximum to put baskets is two and the child should be less than 2 or 3 years old. This type of bicycles are helpful for wifes' because of the usefulness. I guess the number of people who don't have drivers license led to an invention of this kind of bicycle Mamachari. It is easy taking children to kindergartens and shopping groceries.
Moreover, because of the increase of Mamachari users, now there are many fashionable and creative Mamachari's sold in the markets. The seats for children have changed compared to the one's from the past which were usually just a hard square basket but now there are seats made comfortably to sit in.

However, even though the Mamachari's are useful, there are demerits that can be risky for your child. Placing the child seat in the back can be harmful for your child since it is invisible. Also, placing two seats can be hard to balance the bicycle so it can cause accidents.


When I googled the word "Mamachari", I found a interesting competition called "Mamachari race" . As it is, the race is to compete by riding Mamachari. The website tells us that your やる気(motivation) is important to win this competition. If you have やる気 and you wish to join this race check here(Retrieved from http://www.japan-racing.jp/fsw/12/12mama.htm).

What do Japanese people do?

Culture influeces people in many ways . Wether the culture influence one in good or bad ways, there are certain things Japanese are influenced by the culture and there are many things that only Japanaese people do but cannot be found in any other countries. Among those many things Japanese people do, making peace sign whenever one takes a picture and taking a printed sticker picture called "Purikura" are one of the examples of what Japanese people do.



First, "Peace Sign"(ピースサイン) is a typical posture of Japanese people whenever they take photos. If someone turn the camera to one's face they will never look at the camera without the "Peace Sign". This photo shows that two Japanese girls are peacing but the American guy Jake is not doing the peace sign. I guess peace sign is a habit for Japanese. There are many posture instead of peace signs common for girls when they take photos. For instance, such as there are postures which girls use their hands on their chins to make their face look smaller. Young people create a lot of posture's to make them look more beautiful and thin.

Another thing what Japanese people usually do is Purikura. Purikura(プリクラ) is a Japanese sticker picture which is available in many places such as in big malls and game centers. Whenever people hang out somewhere, people usually get into the machine and just get a piece of sticker. Some people take more than 2 times. Moreover, Purikura is popular among the people at any age. Friends, family and classmates, Purikura is one if the ways to leave memories. When I was at the age of 14, people even had a sticker book called "プリクラ帳"(purikura-cho). I don't know whether they still have this or not; however it was really common between girls.

I introduced two ways of Japanese photo taking culture of taking photos with peace sign and taking Purikura for this weeks blog.