Back in the 90s, designers for the U.S. auto market began making cars monstrously huge, culminating in manly SUVs that smells like a steak and seats 35 for your runs to the corner store.
The Japanese market, in the meantime, never eliminated their bike culture of stay-at-home moms who toted their children around town on their mamachari or “mama bicycles.” When I lived in Japan in the 70s and 80s, they looked mostly like standard European-style utility bikes. Since then, Japanese designers applied the American trend of adding features and size to their bicycles. The result is bikes like this Bridgestone Angelino, shown here in the base configuration.
Shuichi in Kyoto runs the Mama Bicycle blog, which shows Japanese bike culture. He’s been wanting to ship a container of mamachari bikes to the USA for a few years now. Shuichi posted a survey to gauge demand. If you think you might be interested in a a very unique bike from Japan, check him out and fill out the survey.