“DRIVER HUNGRY. FEEEEED DRIVER ENGRISH!!”

There seems to be a voracious appetite in Japan for English. Perhaps this is a tribute to the JET Programme sending such attractive vessels of the language, or perhaps it is because something is triggering brains on this side of the planet to wonder why katakana loan words are the way they are. Whatever the reason, English teachers with native ability tend to be in high demand. Outside of high schools that is.

I hop into a cab, eyes bleary from just having woken up, nose dog-cold from the lack of central heating. The sun has barely peaked her bright, radiant head out from behind the snow-peaked mountains of Niihama. The island of citrus has had intermittent freak snow for the past two weeks leading the mountains to look as though Aphrodite scattered a quartorillian nonpareils down from Olympus all over the mountains in her Bridget Jones-like resolution to lose another twenty pounds.

The taxi driver greets me cheerfully and folds up the newspaper he’s been casually breezing over. He looks a bit like Dhlaism - the Street Fighter character with a long neck and a fondness for fatal yoga moves. The long scar running down his left cheek only adds to the uncanny semblance. It was no doubt a fearsome battle between him and the deadly, nimble Chun Li.

The taxi drivers in this town have become friends of mine. The dispatchers greet me with a familiar “Ahh… Nicole-sama. Yes. I know. We’re coming… you lazy ass.” *click* This particular driver was very candid with me in the beginning. During one of our first encounters he turned around, looked me up and down and said snidely: “So. Don’t you have a bicycle.” Even in Japanese I could hear that this word was not punctuated by a question mark. Resigned that he had dubbed me as the Laziest Lazy Of Them All, I had given up the idea of forging a friendship and sequestering a discount. But on this cold, dreary winter day he is particularly smiley and as chatty as a schoolgirl. Every time I stop gasping in sub-par Japanese about the snow or New York he fills the silence with ingratiating, servile praise of my severely lacking Japanese: “So great, Nicole-san! So studious! So wonderful! So fantastic! So superb!” This following my bumbling along with the words “snow” and “maybe” repeated and intermixed together.

And then it all makes sense.

“So… hey… off to teach some English, eh? Think you could teach me something.”

And before I’m even at school my work begins. The English-Hungry Cab Driver is eager to go to Hawaii to simultaneously work on his hula and tan. A bit of English might be beneficial. We spend the drive practicing useful phrases and pronunciation, and I am exceptionally pleased at his rapid progress. As I move to exit the cab from the automatic left-hand door that swings deftly open, he hands me back one hundred yen. “Lesson fee,” he chuckles.

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Published:
1.30.08 / 9am
Category:
amusing incidents, what i call life, culture