OK. Here we go. A round up of the photos from the truly amazing Handmade Bicycle Meeting in Kyoto. The event is being held at the small but super friendly Kaleido Cycle Shop in association with the Build Your Own Bike Factory from Tokyo. We arrived on a scorchingly hot Wednesday afternoon and were relieved to step into the air conditioned store, even more releived when the owner offered us all a cold beer!
Both inside and out were examples of gorgeous frames and bikes...
Along with the associated necessities for building such frames like braze ons...
And lugs...
And, of course a choice of tubes and finishes...
There are also some pretty cool luggage on display from Ripa...
And parts from the super cute Kaostem...
Camera straps and belts from Gunung...
The Build Your Own Bike Factory were offering brazing demonstrations and lessons out in the street...
The bikes man, what about the bikes? Well, they were all stunning, just stunning. Next week we'll put up some of the detailed shots but because the show is still going on we will just post a few photos today. Starting with this Abukuma...
A beautiful Shin 29'er...
A classic looking Stubborn single speed...
A simply perfect Doobat's...
A cute Katsuo work bike...
A very cool Gifted funny bike...
Our personal favorite was this Yanagi. We were lucky enough to take this beauty for a spin and boy is it smooth and surprisingly super light weight...
The craftsmanship that goes into some of these build is just jaw dropping, just check out this Ace Bicycles motorised cruiser/cafe racer...
And this Sunrise Cycles really should be on the wall in some kind of high end art gallery....
The paint job on this Monkey Workshop frame is so damn nice (we're running out of adjectives here!)...
And the kid in all of us would be all over this little 20" MTB also from the Monkey Workshop...
And last, but most certainly not least this elegant Bakansu Cycle cross/monster crosser...
There were a few bikes we missed so we may well pop back to Kyoto over the weekend before the show ends. We would strongly advise anyone reading this to do the same. An amazing show where you get to see some of the world's best bicycles and share a beer with the guys that built them. A big thank you to Kaleidocycle for their hospitality and a personal thank you to Toshio-san from Guell for his navigational skills in finding the show!
