If you follow bicycle content, or if you’ve ever dreamed of doing a bike tour in Japan, you may have heard about the term “rinko” This is an interesting term because, it’s one of those words that doesn’t have a direct translation.
…Well, it technically can be translated – “Rin”= 輪 means “wheel”, and “Ko”= 行 means “go”…“Wheels Go” doesn’t make sense right? To be honest, it doesn’t really make sense for non-cyclist Japanese neither.
This word was apparently originated by Keirin racers when they had to “GO” to a race track with their “BIKES/WHEELS” using the train.
Trains being the main transportation for the majority of Japanese people, the trains can be packed. When bringing your fully assembled bike inside a busy train, it could cause some damages to people’s properties or the trains itself, so most of the train companies in Japan require cyclists to take the wheels off from the bike and put everything in a bag.
This is why we have the Fairweather Bike Carry Bag.
The fact that we have to disassemble our bikes to hop on the train sucks, but rules are rules and the Fairweather bags makes it pretty easy. I’m not going to write about the process since you can see some images on the product page, but I just felt like writing about the context of Rinko for people who are planning to travel to Japan with bikes.
I hope this helped you someway!
