And Follow-Up

So the cab driver story isn't over. Because when I sat down, and we pulled into traffic, my cabbie looks in the rearview mirror - still on his phone - and says, in broken, but intelligble English, "What country you?"

"America."

He nods. In my travel book, any chat with your cabby is license to become buddies with your cabby. My driver in Kyoto was a good dude who had traveled more extensively than I have, albeit many years ago. We talked a lot, about teaching, foreign countries, tourists, and marriage. Everybody talks about marriage. I can't get around that one.

Anyway, I keep going. "California. San Francisco," I say, hoping he'll pick up the thread and sew something friendly. A tea-cozy, maybe...

He nods, then holds up his phone like, "Don't bother me, you rude whitey. I'm talking real words with a real person here."

"Oh." I make a gesture, hopefully an apologetic one. "Sorry."

He shakes his head at me, talks into the phone some more, than presently says, "Bye-bye. Bye-bye!"
He laughs at me in the mirror.

"How long Korea?"

How long have I been here? "3 hours." I point to my wrist, where my watch would be if Mickey hadn't split his leather the week before I left for Tano.

He laughs. "Speak Korean?"

"Nope!" He laughs again, looking a little surprised. Japanese are always surprised when I speak decent Japanese. Koreans always seem surprised that I don't speak Korean. I'm not sure which is the better reaction.

"Why Korea? Business? You working?"

"Visiting a friend."

He nods. "Boyfriend?" I shake my head. "Girlfriend?" I hesitate, then nod. "Girlfriend?!" His eyes get wide and he laughs.

No, no. "Friend, girl. Not girlfriend," I say, but he repeats, "Girlfriend?! Women?!" We go back and forth like this for a while, until I figure out how to be clear.

"I like men!" I declare.

"Oh, oh!" He laughs again and changes lanes, almost without looking. The cab behind us that was sneaking up like a shark slides smoothly into a parallel parking spot at precisely half a second before we smacked his right front bumper. "So how long Korea?"

"Hm, two weeks?"

He nods, sagely, wisely, and picks up the phone again. I swear I never even heard it ring.

Burst of Korean both distorted through satellites, phonelines, and receivers, and distorted by my uncomprehending ears. He hangs up. "My friend lives - " in the same apartment complex as my friend does.

"Your friend, girl, pretty?" He asks me. "Yes, of course," I reply. "Like me!" I strike a cute pose and he cracks up. I'm going to take that as agreement.

"Baek Suck" we both read off the traffic signs. We are getting closer. "I want study English," he confides patiently.

"Good. I want to study Korean." Which is always true for me when I am in Korea. "Now, your English is here," I illustrate by holding my hand at about waist height. "You study, you get good, then your English is here." Corresponding elevation of hand to level of grandiose learning capability. "My Korean is here," I stomp on the floor of the car.

"You're funny!" He is cracking up. "Married? Solo?"

"Solo." I never could get worked up over duets. "You married?"

Here there was a patch of completely unintelligble wordiness. I am not sure if he said he was married, or not, but somehow he got onto having two sons. One in high school and one in junior high. So I guess maybe? Or divorced? Cuz the simple answer would have been, yes.

"Hey! Straight?"

I thought we covered this.

"Left?"

Oh!

I stare out the window. We are in the right neighborhood, but like Japan, Korea doesn't really use street names for addresses (I think?). I recognize where we are, but all the towering apartment buildings surrounding us look alike (I am NOT racist).

"Um... Straight. Then left." I command.

He shakes his head. "No, no." Pointing his finger ahead and shaking it contrarily. "No, no." I try to show him the address I've got on my phone, but he can't read it and we can't magnify the printing. Never mind, he waves me back. We'll just go down every street until we figure it out.

So we pull a u-turn in the middle of the street.

And Mom wonders why I think she'd be a great Korean driver.

"Number?"

I tell him, but I'm sure now we are at the wrong complex. The mountain park place is directly in front of us and it should be on our left.

"No, no, no, no," I try to direct him.

"1-0-5," he replies, pointing left. There's the mountain. Forget the mountain, there's the apartment complex I've been looking for since 9 o'clock this morning when I left my hotel in Osaka.

"That's it, that's it! Okay, go left! Straight, straight! Left!" I am so good at directions.

He's cracking up again. In fact, I don't think he's stopped laughing for a full minute at a time during this drive. "I like you!" he tells me as we roar down the avenue, turning in at the correct complex, winding our way through the various towers, and finally stopping in front of the doors to my friend's apartment building. "Yes! No! Left! Straight! I like you!"

I'm laughing, he's laughing. Maybe he's laughing at me, and I'm laughing with him, but who cares? It's hilarious. As most of life is, when you're honest with yourself. Who really knows what we're doing anyway?

My confidence has been restored, for the moment at least. I still have to count out the correct cash to pay my fare.

 

Good Morning, Seoul-Incheon!

Oh, Korea.

There is something very unsettling about leaving one Asian country where you can read the signs, follow the conversations, interpret the menus, and count out change with obnoxious precision, and heading to a country where the people look the same, but everything else is totally alien.

And no, I'm not racist, I'm realistic. They think we all look alike, too.

Last night, I was an articulate and intelligent, if slightly hammered, citizen of the world, chatting and kanpai-ing with my local sushi chef, comparing sake from Osaka to sake from Kochi, and making bad puns involving ginger and supermarket cashiers. ("Shouga? Shou ga nai!" It doesn't translate.)

Today, I'm running up to the poster at the front of the restaurant, pointing at a faded depiction of rice, eggs, and bamboo shoots, and smiling like a big white fool while the old lady running the joint is complaining to herself about my lack of comprehension, and the waitress is saying, "Ooh! Look! She wants bi-bim-bap! How cute!"

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

It's not enough that I tried to get on the wrong bus outside the airport and was saved only by a kind man who spoke enough English to ask to see my ticket, and gently point out that I really wanted to go to that other departure gate. The cashier at the coffee shop had to patiently help me find the correct change for my lunch, because apparently my math skills are closely linked to my language skills. Not only have I become deaf and mute, suddenly I can no longer add.

People may very well roll their eyes and get put out over my inability to tell a good joke in Korean, or for that matter say "thank you" correctly (I've tried - it's not working out for me), but it doesn't mean I care. For some reason, this trip at least - less than a day into it - I don't take it personally. It's all part of the game. You can't get anywhere if you don't go somewhere new and take a chance.

With a stomach gurgling over with kimchi and bean sprouts, a backpack spilling over with snacks that were purchased at an earlier time for that very probable moment when I'm starving and stuck at home, and my mind brimming over with humor at myself and my awkwardness (I'm not usually clumsy, but today I've knocked over everything I've touched - I almost include the plane in that; if it weren't for the gusty Osaka bay winds, I swear, it would've crumpled when I boarded), I wandered over to the taxi stop.

There was a long line of cars and a short line of people. I watched this one cabbie drive up, on his phone the whole time, and I figured he was going to pull right out of there when he saw a luggage-laden foreigner with her finger on the translate button of Google-talk, wobbling slightly on her trusty, but rather dilapidated after an inadvertant mountain trek, sky-highs.

Instead, he bobbed his head at me and opened the trunk.

Somehow I managed to pronounce the name of my destination correctly. He nodded again, and took off, like I was just another passenger.

That's right. Nailed it.