First Bike Vol.5: The Training Bike Seat Went Up 40mm — Sit On One Before You Enrol

Did you know August 19 is Bike Day in Japan? The eighteenth edition of the event was held that afternoon in Akihabara, at Akiba Square on the second floor of the UDX building, hosted by JAMA and the Japan Motorcycle Promotion and Safety Association. Admission was free, and it ran from 2 p.m. until 8 p.m., so you could drop by after work or school. The latest models from all four Japanese makers were displayed across four themes, alongside a police motorcycle and a Suzuka 8 Hours machine, plus a hands-on area where you could try on helmets and protective gear. Last time in this column I wrote about riding schools suspending daytime motorcycle lessons because of the heat. It has been a summer where getting a licence does not go to plan — but a venue like this is the easiest door to walk through for someone who does not have a licence yet. Getting close to motorcycles before you get the paperwork is completely fine.

A helmet-and-protector try-on area sounds like a minor attraction written down, but it is exactly the kind of thing that helps someone new. Helmets carry the same size labels while each maker assumes a slightly different head shape, so you cannot know whether one fits until you put it on. Protective gear varies wildly too — chest, back, elbow and knee pieces differ completely in thickness and presence. Choosing from online photos alone, you stall at questions like "will this be unbearable in summer?" and "does it fit under a jacket?" Getting to try everything on for free, with none of the pressure of a shop floor, is genuinely valuable.

There is another reason I want to point you toward places with real bikes on the floor. The training fleet itself has been changing generations these past few years. For a long time, the standard 400cc training bike in Japan was Honda's CB400 Super Four. It arrived in 1992 and ended production in October 2022. Its successor is the NX400L, a training-spec model released to riding schools on April 11, 2024, priced at 1,067,000 yen, with Honda planning sales of 2,500 units. Here is the part that matters: the CB400SF training model had a seat height of 750mm, while the NX400L sits at 790mm. That is 40mm higher. It looks small written down, but 40mm completely changes how your toes reach the ground. Weight, meanwhile, dropped from 207kg to 201kg, and the engine went from a 56ps four-cylinder to a 46ps twin. Slightly easier to push around, definitively harder to touch down — that is the honest content of this changeover.

I was the kind of beginner whose mind went blank every time I stopped and only the tip of one foot reached the ground, so this is not somebody else's problem to me. That said, footing is not a single pass-or-fail moment; it changes a lot with practice and with technique. Shift your weight to one side before you stop, pick a spot where the surface is flat and slightly raised, wear boots with thicker soles. If you are still uneasy, the fastest thing is to phone the school before you enrol and ask which motorcycles are in their training fleet and whether a lower-seat version is available. Fleets are replaced on each school's own schedule, so some still run the CB400SF and some are about to switch. Which model, and whether a low seat exists — those two questions alone tell you a lot about whether a school suits you. Almost no school minds being asked, and most are well used to advising shorter riders. The things that look hardest are often the ones you can check with a single phone call.

Back to the event: there was good news from the industry side this year too. Motofumi Shitara, chair of JAMA's motorcycle committee and president of Yamaha Motor, said the new-standard mopeds you can ride on a car licence have drawn "a bigger response than we expected." Honda's Super Cub 110 Light and Yamaha's Jog One were both on display. He also mentioned that applications for personalised licence plates, covering small and light motorcycle classes, open in October. Choosing your own numbers has nothing to do with how a bike rides, not by a millimetre. But it makes the machine feel like yours, and that is honestly fun — I rather like this sort of thing. Even without a licence, you can sit on a bike, try on gear, and think about what numbers you want. Phoning a riding school can come after that. There is no rule saying the first step has to arrive in any other order. And if you are planning to get your licence within the next year, keep those 40mm of seat height somewhere in the back of your mind.