Bicycling: Non-Verbal Communication

Today I noticed something so extremely interesting that I decided to share it with the world (at least with that part of the world that looks at my blog) :-)

When bicycling I often use my nose and my eyes to communicate where I want to go. This helps when cycling through crowded pedestrian zones or when there is an ambiguous situation with another cyclist. It works really well, and it’s a technique I learned when working as a bicycle messenger. So basically it works like this: I point my nose and eyes to the ground about 2-3 meters in direction I intend to cycle (and continuously stare in the direction I'm heading to). Others usually understand, and either realize that I am no danger to them (even if I'm moving fast or close to them), or will move out of the way (if I have the right of way). This works in Vienna (tried at least a million times) and London (tried a few times). However, this does not seem work in Japan!

I’ve tried it about 4 times now (in Tsukuba). Every time it failed... every time the other person reacted as if they did not know where I was heading to. I’m pretty sure now that it simply does not work. Maybe because in general Japanese don’t have such big noses which can be used to point into certain directions? Or maybe it doesn’t work because the others never try to look into my eyes? It actually seems that they prefer to look at the ground themselves. I’d love to ask a bicycle messenger in Tokyo how they manage to quickly move through crowds of people without scaring everyone (and thus resulting in people jumping directly into the direction you wanted to cycle to...). Or maybe Tokyo is different from Tsukuba? I wish I could spend some more time investigating this... but today I learned on Wikipedia, that post-docs are supposed to work 80+ hours per week. That means I'm still a few hours short this week, and if I want to spend my weekend doing other things, I better start getting some work done now...