Patrick Jennings, from Oregon, on the saddle of his first Moto Guzzi bought in Japan, where he lives. Photo courtesy.
January 2025, Japan, BY PATRICK JENNINGS: Call it found in translation. Lost then found. Not talking Scarlett Johansson sulking around a hotel room in her pink underwear or Bill Murray assaulted by faxes of paint samples slid under his door. No Elvis Costello karaoke or make it Suntory Time. More like time itself. Timing. Since I continue to learn, as we all learn, the best things in life arrive via their own schedule. Some, the transverse gods would have it, even twice.
https://wide.piaggiogroup.com/en/articles/people/patrick-jennings-why-i-love-moto-guzzis/index.html
Chronicled in a previous piece for WIDE (see above) a 2003 V11 Le Mans cast a spell on me a couple years ago in Portland, Oregon so strong I had every intention of shipping it to Japan when my wife and I decided to ditch America and move here after Covid. It didn’t take long to discover the obstacles posed by modern emissions standards put an end to any such ideas. Sadly, I had to let the Guzzi go but at least left it in good hands with a cool retired Ducati dealer in his eighties I’d become friendly with since buying an ST3 from him the year before.
I made it to Japan in May of 2023 after a series of delays involving international movers, spouse visa snafus, and the many challenges of transporting a vet-hating Rottweiler with aggression issues halfway across the world in a steel cage designed for lions and tigers. Initial impressions of the new hood? People old, crows huge, streets narrow, need motorcycle. Scored a job soon enough and got to work building another life as an expat in my late fifties. Without reliving the bureaucratic fits and starts of securing a driver’s license here, priority one, will just note been there done that and now freshly licensed well over a year later and the proud owner of my first Japanese bike.
(Moto Guzzi V11 Le Mans, 1.064cc, the sporty model launched in 2002; Wide mag archive).
A 2003 V11 Le Mans. Needle meet haystack. I’m sure the natives have a similar expression. Still learning to count to ten, though, so will cut to the chase. After extensive online sleuthing with the help of Google translate, I located only two V11s for sale in the entire country. One black. One red. Both 2003 and belonging to the same Tokyo custom bike builder and dealer an hour from my house: Siren Motorcycles.
Remember that iconic metal refrain from Axl Rose in Paradise City, “Oh won’t you please take me home” following the bit about green grass and pretty girls? Not much grass to speak of in Tokyo, green or otherwise, and I’m married. This Siren joint is paradise enough to call any city home. Opened in 2002 by Yoshio Komatsu, Siren Motorcycles is the ultimate middle aged man’s man cave when it comes to bikes. Consider how Yoshio says he came up with the name for starters: “The origin of siren is the meaning of the siren of an emergency vehicle and the Siren of Greek mythology. Half-woman, half-bird sea spirit that lives near Sicily and lures passing sailors with her beautiful singing voice causing them to shipwreck. We named it because we wanted to be a warning bell that makes an impact on people with original custom bikes.”
Count me impacted. Siren consists of Yoshio and four employees, all active racers, with two hundred plus bikes crammed into every cranny and spilling into the lot of a small two-story warehouse in the Koto City area of Tokyo. Most are sportbikes, street fighters and cafe racers built before computers took over the industry and turned such freedom machines into annoying iPads on wheels.
A deep dive into the inventory reveals a kid in a candy store like collection of Ducati, MV Agusta, Gilera, Cagiva, Laverda, Aprilia, Moto Morini, Magni, Bimota, BMW, KTM, Triumph, Royal Enfield, Buel, Harley, and all manner of classic Japanese bikes that puts any modern showroom to shame. Yoshio currently has five Guzzis on the floor and estimates he’s sold around a hundred over the years, including more than thirty V11s alone.
Fluent in English and professorial in nature, I get the sense he has a soft spot for the Italian twins, describing them as “simple bikes” with a wry smile as we discuss how I’ve reached the point in my life where I am only interested in owning analog bikes that don’t require a password to service. What remains unspoken if mutually understood between us as he closes the sale is how much of the Moto Guzzi allure involves the people and stories surrounding them.
Yoshio’s Siren Song is as Guzzista as it gets. Buying a rare, imported bike from him prone to glitches that has been out of production for twenty years in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language well enough to call a tow truck is a cautionary tale to the wind and music to my ears. Safe to assume we’ll be seeing more of each other over parts, if not simple shipwrecks, to come. Welcome to paradise. Welcome home.
PATRICK JENNINGS
Patrick Jennings and his Moto Guzzi in Japan. Photo courtesy.
Source and info:
https://mediumdog.com/siren-song/
Patrick Jennings:
mediumdog.com
MOTO GUZZI IN JAPAN:
https://www.motoguzzi.com/jp_JA/
