Japanese are quiet, polite, law-abiding people
Some of those bicycles look new.
It seems the owner of the Family Mart in front of Nishi Tachikawa station does not take kindly to commuters using the FamilyMart customer parking space as long term/all day parking. Which is understandable. His or her solution is simple, just clear the offending bicycles out in the morning.
So be careful, you city slickers, we won’t be putting up with your modern, free-wheeling ways.
Of course, the way the Korean equivalent of this shop owner would deal with this situation is basically the same [with probably more aggravation, swearing and damage] and a sign saying something like “Next time you park here, I’ll fucking bash your cunt face in” or something equally vile [and if you don’t believe me, I can point you to a similar sign painted on a wall somewhere in 合井 that says “쓰레기를 버리면 대갈통 부셔버릴 거야!” So there.
A dear friend of mine is of the idea that swearing doesn’t advance your cause. Au contraire!, as Garfield would say. Countless examples show that Koreans themselves, especially men in my age group, are aware that being foul-mouthed is usually the only way of catching the attention of a person who is being rude, ignoring you, and otherwise behaving in a way that is not acceptable, but with a good-to-high probability to get away with it.
Basically, what happens with such people when you crank up the abuse volume, is that they stop ignoring you, and listen. That puts a stop to one of the problems. Actually, two of them, for they are usually shocked into silence for a duration proportional to the abuse and the level of respect they expect to get. Which gives you the time to finally open your own trap, and make your point of view acknowleged [I didn’t say agreed to, yet…].
What happens next is anything from a bar brawl to a lengthy arguing to abdication. Depends on how many people are around [the fewer the better] and how low you yanked the offender’s pants down. I’ve seen gramps fighting each other over a seat in the metro, to finally shake hands and seat together [another seat had just been freed] and chat as if nothing happened after a while [one of the guys just surrendered and apologized]; a “journalist” [abusing terminology here] kicking the hell out of a vending machine, swearing like a madman, because his boss had told me things he didn’t care to hear; a housewife making a very ugly scene in Tongdaemun Market over 1,000 won [0.8€], hair flying, p’odori breaking up the fight; a bar being totaled because a drunk had called another customer’s girl a whore; another guy [same bar, different time] being lifted in the air by the throat and apologize mid-air before sharing a beer with his attacker; a landlord being called words too foul to reproduce here, because she refused to give back the key-money, suddenly more interested in forking over the money than dealing with the irrate ajŏsshi; etc…
In Korea’s modern [?] individualism, agression is omnipresent. Anger management is a non-issue. In the old days, older people used their social status to clamp down on rebellion [just as violent methinks], whereas today people need to be violent, at least in words, to assert themselves. Is there a need for me to point out the surge in 씨발/minute ratio in movies – and thus in kids speech – in the last 20 years?
So, even if this image at the beginning – and the underlying behaviour [the shop owner’s and/or the freewheeling bike owners] – seem rude to you, relax. This is a civil way of dealing with people… 