Zeus Side-Bike

The parents of one of my wife’s teachers happen to life very close to the Daigoji temple and kindly offered us a very conveniently located space to park our car during the Godairiki festival. The mother also went out of her way to surprise us with some fantastic tasting sushi o-bento after we returned from the festival – how very nice of her!

The family clearly loves motorbikes and a quick look into their garage gave us a look at a kind of bike that you don’t see every day! It’s a custom bike named “Zeus” made from a french company called “Side-Bike“. The engine is from Peugeot (which explains the Peugeot logo on the front) and the 2,000cc engine is actually located in the trunk of the side bike and not in the main-bike. I was told there are only about 50 of those bikes driving on the streets of Japan!

Some interesting facts about the bike:

• The bike seats 4 people (2 on the bike, 2 in the side car next to each other)
• the side-bike is air conditioned
• the back wheel of the bike also turns if you steer
• The bike is using a normal manual gear box to change gears
• the bike has a reverse gear
• if you use the bike on toll-roads, then you still only have to pay toll-fees for bike, even though the thing handles more like a car