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.

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