Crazy Taxi

In homage to one of my favorite dreamcast games (soon ported to PSP), I'll continue the Japanese language talk.

I sometimes take a taxi home from work. It's expensive, but not that expensive because I live sort of close to work. But there is something of an executive upper class feeling to taking it home. You don't have to walk to the station, you don't have to wait for the train, be packed in with 1000 people, get out and walk up stairs and down stairs and wait for a change of trains, you don't have to walk up 5 flights of stairs to get out of the subway, all that sort of thing.

In fact, you can just sit in a nice small place all to yourself, and check your mail, make some calls, look at all the buildings and people around you. It's a small treat. So I've taken to it.

On a number of my taxi rides home I've been in conversations with the taxi drivers. It takes maybe 15 or 20 minutes to drive near my place, so there's ample time for conversation. I'll sort the ride conversations from worst to best.

1) I tell the driver where to go and I end up there. Not so interesting at all, and because of traffic sometimes it's an expensive uninteresting experience.

2) The driver doesn't have GPS and asks me every road to take. I get to use my Japanese and my subpar navigation skills (if only we were walking, that one-way sign wouldn't have mattered!)

3) The driver makes a comment praising my Japanese or makes some small comments along the way "today's crowded isn't it" etc.

*TIME OUT* All of the time you get comments that your Japanese is good. Commenting strangers is a Japanese way. I was out one night in Gunma on my arrival in Japan and a Japanese salaryman kept looking back at me, out of fear or curiosity, and to alleave the stress I just say good evening to him (konbanwa). He said "You're so good at Japanese." It's the standard remark. It doesn't mean anything, they're just trying to be nice. How could someone's language ability be marked as good or skilled or whatever just by being able to say "hi" ? So anyway.

4) The conversation starts with the driver praising my Japanese and then we engage in conversation for the whole trip. That's nice.

5) I once received a few sincere comments about my Japanese from a driver and it made me feel happy. Similar to the last post about talking on the phone, he gave me the usual "you're japanese is good" but then went on to talk about how my speaking was very easy to understand (not the usual foreigner accent) and I spoke like a Japanese person and so on. It was much better than a lot of other situations I've been in here, and well, it's only happened once, so it gets the #5 in this list for best ranking.

I've also taken cabs with drivers with very good english. I don't usually try to fight with them about language, I'm sure they need English conversation opportunities more than I need Japanese ones.

I recently read a Japanese essay from Murakami Haruki where he talks about meeting a friend that can tell where a cab driver is from by the way that they talk to you as a customer passenger. I can't remember the locations now so I'll have to re-read the essay, but it basically came down to the 'friendly talkative ones' being from someplace, and the opposite type being from inside Tokyo itself.

I'm going to try to find out from now on where the drivers I meet with are from, to see if I can tell if it's a regional thing or not.