Flawless English

Black driver from the Sudan
HIs English was almost flawless, so I asked how long he had been in Canada.
"40 years, that's a long time."
"Not 40, four years. I'm not even 40 yet!", he replied.
I always do find it hard to guess age. To me, he could have been anyage between 25 and 45. I find it particularly difficult with blacks and Asians. Probably an artifact of my mono-cultural, mono-racial upbringing.

He left the Sudan because of the 'situation'. The military government does whatever they like.

He graduated from university over there, but like many immigrants, his degree wasn't fully recognized and he had to 'upgrade' it. He had just finished several years at a local college. All the time he had been there, he had also been working as a taxidriver. It's not too bad because you can choose your own hours. He rents the car from the company rather than them employing him. He pays them $250 per week and then buys whatever gas he needs off them, presumably at a cheaper rate. On an average week, he can pull in $550 or $600. That's very good money according to him.

He is going to visit the Sudan again this year. It will be safe now because he is a Canadian citizen. Noone would dare touch him.

Youyu ga nai

A driver of 59 years old wanted to go to Harvard in the United States or to England when he was young. It is true that he looked older than his 59 years, but he was still not an old man.
Mou youyu ga nai.
One of my favourite words - youyu - is back again.
I asked whether it was insufficient youyu for time or for money.

Even if I had the time, I wouldn't have the money.
I suggested hooking up with a London cabby over the Internet and doing an exchange. I'm sure that lots of London cabbies would love a trip to Japan. It would certainly make an interesting clash of cultures but of course might not lead to international peace and understanding.
It's cheapest to travel in February, I said, You can probably get a flight to England for under 100,000 yen. BUt the weather in England is awful. Just horrible damp cold weather. Still, it is cheap.
So how old are we when the youyu drives up. What kills it?
I saw a program on TV a few months ago about old people around the world. In the United States, the hundred year old was lifting weights. In England, the 105 year old going out to lunch every day by herself. In Okinawa, the 110 year old was running a shop. In Florida, the 115 year old was tired - oh so tired. It seemed that her youyu had finally run out. That seemed appropriate and it was merely a cruel spectacle to see the surrounding people wheel her out for the celebration of yet another birthday for the oldest person in the world.

But what kills this man's youyu, at an age about half of that woman in Florida? Is it our spouses, our children, our jobs? Should it be dead at 59? Was my small tip towards the driver's 'England fund' ever going to be able to waken it even slightly - to make a dream turn over in its sleep?

Canada is the best country in the world

Taxi drivers in Canada are different. OF course, we've already seen that they're different in Japan - but not as different as Canada. In Japan, they are all Japanese - not even a Korean in sight. The driver from Toronto airport into the city had an accent. I thought that he was a French speaker from Quebec. He had a hint of a French accent, but his English was excellent. He was from the Lebanon. All these drivers are from somewhere else. Not somewhere else like retired from a company or trying to recover from a bankrupted restaurant - another actual place.

Trained as a paramedic in the Lebanon. It was the only way to avoid the conscription into the army which had recently changed from 18 months to two years.
Unfortunately, just as he qualified, the civil war broke out and he was thrust right into the middle of it where he was right in the center of the bloody massacare.

HIs redcross ambulance was attacked and destroyed. He was wounded himself.

Escaped to Cyprus via a ship and was able to enter using his Redcross papers. Later, they also gave him a little money which took him to France.

He got in on a student visa but in reality, he worked at a series of menial jobs in restaurants.

He was finally able to get in touch with his parents. They hadn't heard anything of him in three months and assumed that he was dead. They couldn't help him financially. There was no money left in the Lebanon. They urged him to stay away from the country and he realized that he was on his own.

Managed to enter Canada, not as a refugee, he said with some pride, but because of his valued skills as a paramedic.

Studied as an engineer for a while, but had to revert to working as a taxidriver so that he could earn money to help bring over his family. He eventually brought over six of them. They all went onto higher learning and a higher standard of life, but he kept working as a taxi driver. He had no regrets about that. His wife is from the Lebanon, too. It is easier to be married to someone who shares the same values.

Canada is the best country in the world. Sometimes, he complains about the snow, but the people - he would never have a bad word to say about them.

Showtime

After a music session in an Irish pub in Sakae, I knocked on the window of a taxi to let me in. He waved me to the car in front and I saw that there was a line-up. I got in the car and then remembered that I had approximately no money in my wallet since I had paid two months of electricity bills in the morning that included the massive cost of winter-time air conditioning. That missing 18,900 yen sent me begging back to Tom, my bandmate, who was still standing on the sidewalk trying to unlock his bicycle while his fingers froze. Tom gave me 2,000 yen. "I owe you", I said. "No, you don't - you gave me extra at the gig the other day." Whether that's true or not, I don't recall, but it was the best money that I had earned all night.
When I got into a taxi (probably the same one) the second time, the taxi driver was a jovial chap. He immediately started talking. Usual stuff - it's cold.
Used to work at many different jobs.
- Painted kimonos by hand in Kyoto. He was from Kyoto.
- Was a music producer. Set up enka shows. A good enka singer can earn 1,800 Man En in a night! That's enough to buy the apartment that I gave away in my divorce and surely one of the subconcious reasons that drove me to write this taxi-driven diatribe.
- An unknown or unpopular enka singer earns only 50,000 yen in a night.
- I explained that I had earned a beer - after playing for several hours on a mandolin with a flute player. But it was fun. He smiled as I got out of the taxi and wished me well.

Hokkaido Man

It's minus thirty degrees in Asahigawa.
Middle of Hokkaido, the second biggest city in Hokkaido after Sapporo.
Toyota tests their cars up there for the cold.
In 1912, it was minus 42 degrees in Asahikawa. I told him that, but he already knew it. He knew all about it and explained it to me so excitedly that I hardly understood a word. No-one else had ever talked to him about Asahikawa.
He's going back to Asahikawa after he retires. He's been in Nagoya as long as me - for 18 years. Before that, he was in Tokyo, working as a salaryman but his heart is in Asahikawa.
If you can just put up with the cold, the food is great and the people are good. Yes, there are many good people. I'm going to Asahikawa.

Crazy Driving

A few seconds after we got in the cab, a black car - I can never identify the type of car because I really have no interest - anyway, the black car almost took the side off the taxi and then swerved away. Maybe he was drunk or maybe our taxi driver was the one had been errratic. It was all so fast that I hardly noticed, but no-one was hurt. I asked the driver what would happen if he was in an accident. The company has them all insured so there is no personal burden on the driver, but it does involve the hassle of calling the police and presumably at least a few hours of lost working time. I had figured that a near miss like that would cause our driver to take it easy along the night roads of the city. But no fear of that. After being asked about the insurance, he got awfully quiet and started exuding waves of badness - directed at the back seat, if I'm to specify a direction. I hadn't meant any harm, but clearly questioning the insurance setup was equivalent to questioning his sexuality, so he drove like a madman down the small backstreets to our apartment. I didn't leave a tip.

I used to be a boxer

I got in the taxi at Kanayama. This was one of the younger drivers and he was full of angst and hormonal energy. He used to be a boxer and it seemed like his past had permeated his present job. It's the closest that I have come to seeing a driver calling someone else a wanker. Japanese don't really use curse words in the same way as the Irish. It's more like "baka yaro".

It's Cold Tonight

Rough notes - I'll get to it!

Old guy
Japan is too cold, isn't it
One year from retirement
Married for four years to Philipino
Moving to Philipino when he retires
His nenkin is 125,000 yen. With that he can live in luxury in the Philipine. Even a bank worker over there only gets 20,000 yen per month.

He doesn't speak Tagalog. He has no need to learn it as his wife speaks Japanese. There are so many Philipinos who speak Japanese and there are lots of Japanese and Korean restaurants. He hates Philipino food. It's too supai.

I gave him a couple of hundred yen for his Philipino retirement fund. He gave me a map of the entrances to the expressway. Not being a driver, I trashed it the following morning, but the sentiment - that I will keep for a long time.

The Prius and the Brazilian

It was a Prius, one of those cool hybrid cars. They cost 3 million yen. That's almost twice as much as the other taxis on the road which come in at about 1.8 million. Actually, it's the same price as the classic Toyota Crown, that luxury car. It's funny that a car that is saving so much petrol and running so much more economically is still a luxury item. But that's the world. As Dilbert was saying today "pay weasels to lie about how environmentally-friendly your products are and then eat lots of bad food so that you die before the Earth does."

It does have a nice big boot comparable to the size of the Crown. Or perhaps bigger. Both of my suitcases fitted it, one on top of the other and these were serious size cases, the kind that come in at 27 kilos on the airport scales and you're nudging your foot under the edge of the scale to try to make it come down so that they don't try to charge you 1% of the first class fare for each extra kilo. It always seems totally arbitratry to me about who they charge and who they don't. There was a large arrogant black lady in front of me once who had to take out her credit card to pay $300 on the spot, whereas we, with our heavier-looking cases, got a smile and a nice seat. Wonder what Dilbert would have to say about that. Did blacks manage to move up in the world only to be discriminated at the first-class rate?

The cases fitted and my other bits and bobs that I was moving from one place to another fitted in the other compartments of the car. I seem to spend my entire life lugging stuff. I sometimes think that it's my destiny. If it's not a 20 kilogram guitar amp, it's a few boxes of books for shipping out. I bought a cart the other day, but the cart and I never seem to end up in the same place at the same time. Even today, I was carrying a heavy guitar in a big case (actually my beautiful new double-neck guitar and mandolin) on my bicycle. It got progressively heavier until I arrived at the guitar shop, which was closed. In desperation, I went to a friend's apartment which was nearby - the first time since I was about 11 that I've called on someone's house without letting them know first. He very kindly allowed me to store the instrument there until tomorrow. I just couldn't bear the thought of bringing it back home on my bicycle. It was cutting into my hand. One of these days, I'm going to buy myself a car. First, of course, I should probably get a driving license. In the meantime, this blog is going to be busy.

Anyway, back in the Prius, after doing his usual speel of explaining the environmentally-friendly Prius, he asks me where I'm from. This is an improvement as that usually has to be my question, and realistically, a Japanese person in Japan should be more interested in where a foreigner is from than vice versa. After all, there are a lot less of us - probably 123 million less at the less census.

But he asked me and he was genuinely interested, because the funny thing was that all of his old girlfriends had been foreigners. And funnier really was that he used to be a rock musician, playing around Japan: Tokyo, Osaka, places like that. And of course, the rockstar thing attracted the foreign girls or at least opened the door to them. His first girlfriend was Italian. The next was German and then he went for a Brazilian who was a great singer and they played together. It's unusual for a Japanese person, especially a man, to ever date a foreigner, but to date three of them might extraordinary. It's not of course. It becomes a pattern, and if a Japanese guy dates one foreign girl, the probabiliy is that he will date a few more. It gets into the blood - the Oriental version of going bamboo, I guess. Most of them eventually outgrow their foreign loves - or are outgrown by them. It's generally the Japanese women who stick the whole race. Perhaps that's a sign of the greater patience of the Japanese female - after all, you need a lot of patience to put up with the average foreigner.

So he put on the stereo and that Prius had a fine sound. He always listens to it low, but for my benefit, he put on an old 60's track called Simon Says. I'd heard it before, a long time ago, but somehow it made so much more sense when I listened to it in an environmentally-friendly Japanese taxi, introduced by someone who played it in rock and roll bands thirty years ago with a cute Brazilian at his side.

I unloaded all the stuff; the suitcases, the plastic rubbish bags that were filled with stuff that is probably rubbish but I haven't checked yet. I gave him a meishi and scribbled my blog page on the back, telling him to mail me sometime if he has a look. He doesn't use the Internet much, so in the meantime, he invited me down to listen to music in his Prius. He's at Tsurumai park all the time - the only guy with a Prius - so I'll recognize him. It sounds like a fun way to spend a day.

Lost Keitai

I had just got back into Nagoya on the train after a long international flight from Ireland via a six hour wait in Frankfurt airport. The sausages and sauer kraut were good, but it's about a 24 hour door-to-door and I was pretty zonked when I got off the train and into a taxi to finally head back home. I took my keitai out of my backpack in the taxi and noticed that it tasted of chocolate - there was a old broken chocolate bar in the pocket. Now, someone else is tasting my keitai because it never arrived back home with me. There are at least eight taxi companies in Nagoya and I called them all one by one. They were very nice, but the chocolate covered keitai must be considered a delicacy in the taxi-driving world. Still, I live in hope. I'll go to Softbank tomorrow and put the phone service on hold, but I reckon that I'll give the world a few more days to get over its chocolate addiction.

Incidentally, I passed a police car yesterday, so I asked to be directed to the nearest koban. I think that I may have interrupted a tense drug bust because the policemen were acting a bit strange. The young guy said "what's wrong?" and when he found out, he said that he'd take a report right away.
First question: "where's your gaijin card?"
Oops - I left it with my passport when I got back from the airport.
Second question: "you know that you have to carry it at all times?"
Darn, here I go, heading for the starkness of a Japanese prison without even the sustenance of a chocolate covered telephone.

Thank You

He was reading a porn magazine when I got into the back of the cab at Chikusa. That's not such an unusual thing to see in Japan. Men read comic style porn magazines with nude photos on trains and all other public places. The driver put it away and we headed off.

"Were you waiting long," I asked.
"No, not so long."
"How long?"
"About 20 minutes," he replied.

Long enough to have a good effective look at a porn magazine, I guess, if you're lying in your bedroom, but a taxi cab sounds less accommodating.

"How long is a long wait?"
"An hour."
"What do you do while you're waiting?"
"Books."
"Yeah right," I thought, and added aloud, "what kind of books do you like?"
He paused a moment and said "well, not really books. I like the news. You know, newspapers. Yes, I like the newspaper."

I guess that most people like the kind of news that appears naked and sexy in front of them. Fair enough, he's an honest chap.

"Have you been a taxi-driver for long?", another of my standard questions.
He didn't seem quite so in the mood to talk after my remarks about his reading choice, but finally he muttered "five years."
"Do you enjoy it?"
"No. Not really. But I guess that all work is pretty hard."
Drawing on my embarrassing desire to work NLP on everyone, I ask "what would be the ideal job for you?"
"A cook."
"What kind of food?"
"Chinese. I used to be a cook?"
"Why did you give that up?"
"Iro-iro."
That's one of my favourite expressions in Japanese. I use it myself all the time. Iroiro, means 'many thing' or 'different things' and can be used to answer questions without actually saying anything. It really means something along the lines of "I'm not going to answer that because I think it's really none of your business, or possibly I'm just too caught up in my post-twenty minute porn break that I really couldn't be bothered explaining to a half-wit like you."
It's quite a polite expression. I tried a different tact.
"Where are you from?"
"Nagoya."
Back to NLP mode to counter his one-wordiness, "is there any place that you'd like to visit?"
"Hokkaido."
I tried to elicit a few more comments, but wasn't getting much out of him. His pent-up penthouse energy was probably depleted and he wanted some peace and quiet, not a curious gaijin in the back.

As I was getting out of the taxi, I said to him, "good luck in getting to Hokkaido some day."
He ignored me and I went to the house.
I looked back and he was calling out the taxi window. I went closer thinking that I had forgotten something.

He was saying "thank you."

Sometimes, it's hard to know which of the words you say reaches someone.

Wrong Signs

All taxis in Japan have a sign on the back of the passenger seat. Of course, it's not usually used as a passenger seat because the passenger(s) sit in the back. But if there are four people, one will probably sit in the front. Anyway, the sign gives the name of the driver and his hobbies. I guess that the purpose is to give passengers a starting point for a conversation if they are in the mood.

I'm always in the mood for a taxi chat. This driver's hobby was listed as karaoke.
"So you like music", I asked
"Yes, I listen so much that I wear out cassettes really quickly", he replied.
"What kind of stuff do you listen to?"

And so he began to give me a history of his listening experience since the 1960's. It suddenly dawned on me that it was directly related to my research into English songwriting in Japan. The influence of the Beatles and Dylan in the 60s sparked off a huge folk movement and the Group Sounds movement, some of which sparked off L2 songwriting. I had been hanging out on Wikipedia trying to find information about the period and had completely overlooked the simple solution of asking people who had grown up in the era. Another methodological kiss in the ass for me :)

As I got out of the taxi, armed with a list of bands to check out, I said to the driver, "karaoke, ganbatte ne".

"Karaoke? I don't do karaoke."
"But it says it here," I said.
"Really? Oh it's my wife who likes karaoke."

Funny thing, isn't it. Sometimes a whole new door can open to you, even when the sign is wrong.

Changing beliefs

Last night, a taxidriver changed my mind.

I don't drive myself and spend half my life lugging heavy musical gear, books or computers from one place to another, so I spend a lot of time sitting in the back of taxis. In other cities, I have talked to taxidrivers who were from that city and had worked as a taxidriver for years. In Nagoya, all the taxidrivers come from somewhere else. There's are lots from Kyushu and even from Okinawa. They all seem to be running or getting away from something else, too. There are failed businessmen - failed because they don't get a second chance in Japan. There are restructured salarymen, too old now to get a new job in a similar company, in Japan where experience seems to count for so much less than loyalty. There are old men who shouldn't really be behind a wheel at all, and certainly not behind a wheel for 18 hours a day driving other people around.

But the guy last night was a genuine Nagoya taxidriver from Nagoya - just like the traditional image of a London cabbie. He has been working at the same company since I was three years old, almost 35 years ago. He lives next to his company in the company dormitory in Shinsakae. HIs pride and belief in the company are immense and he has no respect for those drivers who work for a few years at one company and then move on. Trust is everything. The company will do anything for him that he asks. He is still a few years off retirement, but they have promised him a job after that for as long as he wants. He chooses his own hours to work. In his case, he works from 5am until 6pm each day except Sunday. He sleeps a solid eight hours every night. He is healthy and content. He is proud of his job.

He changed my mind about the loyalty system in Japan. Perhaps it is the source of many of the good things in the country, rather than just being a closed system where people don't get a second chance.

Japan is changing. I wonder how many loyal taxi drivers on the road today will still be driving a cab in the year 2042. I will miss them.

Golden Week Holidays

Golden Week is a nice holiday in Japan. The weather is generally pretty good and although it's not really a week, most people get at least three days off. But this taxidriver isn't getting any day off. In fact, he hasn't taken a day off in the last 365 days. His days aren't short either. He works 12 hours a day and then just goes back home to eat and sleep. He sometimes wonders why he was born at all. Was this what he was supposed to do. With all that work, you might imagine that he's pulling in a large salary. The opposite seems to be true. Because he's not getting enough customers, he has to work longer hours. Work has its enjoyable moments, but it has its horrible moments, too. So, if you're not getting quite the holiday that you wanted during Golden Week or are finding this heavy rain a little too much for your picnic, enjoy what you have - it's so much more than that taxi driver.

Kyoto Drivers

Friendly Kyoto - well, it was until the taxi driver refused to open the door to let us in. That hasn't happened me in a long time, and you'd think that Kyoto would be used to taxis by now. Sarah went up to the window and knocked, saying 'nihongo ga dekiru yo' (we can speak Japanese). At this magical signal, he opened the door, but I wasn't having any of it. I leaned my head in the door and told him that I wasn't going to get in his taxi and that he had lowered the whole image of Kyoto.

We got another taxi immediately. Kyoto is full of taxis and this guy was happy to take our money and bring us to the Irish pub in Gion to see some jazz. He was a 'yes' man - he kept saying say to everything.
Are you from Kyoto?
Yes.
Do you like Kyoto?
Yes.
Where should we go to see in Kyoto?
Yes.
Have you ever been to Afghanistan?
Yes.

We had a drink at Tadg's in Gion and watched the jazz band who were rather fun. The piano player looked a little uncomfortable but that may have been because it was a small stage and he was six foot five with the most impressive nose we had ever seen.

On the way back, our renewed image of friendly Kyoto was slightly damaged. About 200 meters from Gion, as we walked down a tiny road that surely used to be for rickshaw only, we came to one of the most dangerous junctions that I have ever seen. Where these two tiny roads of less than five meters met, taxis were jostling for position in each direction. I almost lost my foot as a taxi swerved by me, narrowly also missing a taxi coming in the other direction. So much stress trapped inside these drivers, coming out in the form of anxious life-threatening dashes back to the line of taxis waiting in Gion.

When we finally got one of the madmen to stop, he had already morphed into the placid Kyoto taxi driver that we expect. He was an old man, pretty hard of hearing, from Kyoto of course. Almost all taxi drivers in Kyoto are from Kyoto, unlike Nagoya where they seem to mainly come from Kyushu.

The madness had been covered over again.

The Hippy

I was on my way to Kyoto to play at some the Saint Patrick's day events. They like me down there. NIce people. Last year, I got to hang out with Lafcadio Hearn's great grandson and great-great grandson at last year's event. Kyoto is a very cultural place, full of fine temples, foreign artists and good German beer.

This guy had a chomage - one of the traditional Japanese style haircuts that he explained were very popular until the Meiji era. Japanese men use to tie their hair up in a ponytail. Men wearing ponytails give me the image either of a man trying to stay young beyond his time or else a mark of actually being cool. Recently, for Japanese men, I've found them to be cool. There's a guy in the computer department at my university who actually talks some sense at meetings. To me, in Japanese university culture, that equals 'cool'.

The taxi driver was 63 and he wore his chomage as a sign of an earlier time in his life. I asked him what work he had done before his current job. He said that he'd never really been into work and had been a hippy for years.

He had spent one and a half years travelling around Europe in his twenties, hitching rides and smoking hashish. He was in Spain during the time of Franco when trouble would descend if three people gathered together to chat. It was obviously a good time for couples. Franco made life hell for the Spanish but didn't really bother the foreigners and the drugs there were almost as good as Morocco.

He slept out on a lot of park benches and railway stations. 'Hippy', he was called in the early 1970's. 'Homeless' is what he would be called today. The image of an old man sleeping on a park bench definitely doesn't call to mind images of flower power and free love.

When he came back to Japan, he spent another three and a half years hippying around. When it got cold, he'd head down to Okinawa and then in the summer, he escaped the heat by hitching up to Hokkaido.

He says he's going back. I asked him when, so he decided on the spot that next year was a good time. He doesn't have to give up any job as he's a free-lance taxidriver. Once they have their freelance license, they have it for life. So, it's back to Morocco that he's heading.

Maybe it's true that it's always possible to go back.

Gamagori

We went out to Gamagori two nights ago, a beautiful scenic spot on the Pacific coast of Japan. It's only 38 minutes from Nagoya, but I hadn't been there in 15 years since I did my initial training at a Japanese engineering company. This year has been so bizarrely warm that it seemed like an Irish summer by the sea. We walked out to the little 'island', Takeshima. I call it an 'island' because that's presumably what it used to be before they built the bridge. Still, the bridge is rather tasteful compared to most Japanese bridges. In fact, the whole area is still beautiful and the local wildlife seems to agree. I haven't seen so many birds together in one place in years. There were some fine fights for crumbs between the seagulls and the pidgeons. The seagulls were bigger and more viscious, but the pidgeons weren't scared of the people at all and succeded in getting most of the crumbs.
We took a taxi from the seafront at Gamagori to our lovely ryokan. It was very reasonable - only 13,500 yen for a great big room with a fabulous view, an outdoor onsen that was unfortunately rained upon that night, and a complimentary breakfast.
Our taxi driver said that he was thirty years older than me. I doubted that because I'm 37 and he looked considerably younger than 67. However, he turned out to be 63 which I took as a compliment on my own age, too.
"That's a great place you're staying at," he said. "You can take your drink right into the onsen and down to the sea."
Drinking is always one of my favourite conversations, so I asked "do you like drinking yourself?".
"Oh yes, I love it, but I gave it up ten years ago. I was sitting around the house drinking all day - couldn't hold down a job. Then the wife left me - said that I was a waste of space."
"Did she get married again?", I asked.
"Yes, but I kept drinking. Didn't stop until I had been hospitalized with liver problems for the third time."
"What did you drink, beer, sake?"
"Anything that I could get my hands on."

Gamagori is a nice place to visit, but it doesn't seem to have quite the soul that it used to. All the ferries out to the islands have stopped. We got our good rate because people aren't going there in the numbers that they used to. There aren't many young people around and the ones that we saw were more interested in their gameboys than the scenery around them. It's the kind of place where liquor shops do well.

Welcome to taxichat

You are cordially invited to share your taxi stories. There's something about a taxi, something about the way you're talking to the back of the driver's head, something about it all that makes for good open conversation ... what interesting stories have you heard on your taxi rides? Share your photos, share your stories ...