Sam's question about the Japanese government went largely unanswered, but it has me thinking.

Japan, they tell me, is a very crowded country. They have millions of people in a limited space with heavy traffic, expensive housing, noisy cities and probably some air pollution. That is not my kind of place.

And yet motorcycles and scooters are a major means of transportation. How can they do that? In heavy traffic, the guy on a putt putt is a sitting duck. He breathes exhaust gases and gets crowded off the road by vehicles many times heavier than his. In an accident, he is the big loser. It is pretty much the same in Italian cities.

Sometimes I think I would like to take a scooter and spend a vacation in a place with light traffic, low speed limits, good roads, comfortable temperatures, clean air and some good sight-seeing. But if such places really exist, they are rare and hard to locate.
Howard