I have had a friend spend $12000 on ZX-10 for his first bike cause he thought it was cool. He can't stay on it for more than an hour before he gets all cramped up. 
I'd say he's just lucky he survived riding it for more than 1 hour! That's exactly what I was talking about, 400lbs with 150hp! If you've ridden any recent 600s, you'd probably change your recommendation too. Maybe a monster 620, but I would definately not recommend a newer 600 to a first timer, especially not if he's timid. There's no loss of pride in buying a small bike to get down the basics, and there are enough options out there to have a decent selection. I'd almost even suggest a buell blast
. A certain BigMike has a suzuki gs500, which is another great first bike. The biggest I'd suggest for a timid first timer is a 500, and that's only cause they're pretty tame, but still have enough power for longer rides. And you had an fzr250?! Too bad you didn't bring that back to the states, that'd be worth some cash! I've been drooling over people's honda vfr/rvf400s, and the super rare cbr250, but could never gather up enough scratch to snag one! I've even seen an 04 or 05 ninja zx400 (which looks nearly like the newer zx600) at the track, and when I asked what it cost to get into the states he pretty much said "you probably don't wanna know!". I really dig bikes that you don't see every 20 year old squid riding to the starbucks every day.
Oh yea, I'm going to wrap the header on the street f4i, cause the last ride I went on in hot weather I got a badass rash/burn on the inside of my legs. Looked like a bad sunburn, and felt about the same. Too much heat boiling up below the seat. Probably wouldn't have been an issue, but we had a slow rider with us and were on a very tight twisty back road, so we were only going about 10-30 mph most the time, and our bikes were pegged at about 230 degrees the whole time. Not fun!
And I'll agree with the duck st3, those are neat bikes! They're still aircooled right? There's a couple of really neat 03 or 04 749s on a local forum for sale right now, but they're just too damn expensive.
