Only in Japan - wheeling the kids around

Quite a large number of Japanese use their bicycles on a regular basis. After commuting between one end of the city to the other by train or trains, a bicycle is a welcoming home-like sight. Apart from the roads being tight and windy there is also the issue for car owners that to rent a parkingspace can equal the cost of renting an apartment. As soon as we got here the kids were flabbergasted over the flagrant disregard for helmets here. People on bicycles, unless hightech and wearing 300.000 yen uniforms do not as rule wear helmets, even the ones with two kids or more in various high gadgety chairs don't have a single helmet between them. Which to my kids seemed impossible. Even when we went and got them their bicycles we had a hard time finding helmets for them, regardless of the fact that we were in one of the larger Tokyo bicycleshops. Luckily they're both big headed ;-) and hence managed to get grown up ones, albeit Elena benefitting from a bit of padding.

But the weirdest contraption I have witnessed here by far would have to be the kindergarden trolleys. Instead of taking the tiny 2-5 year olds out walking they're carted around like animals in a show cage or Icelandic highschool dimmitantes for that matter ;-) So what do you think? Normal or bizarre?