car & driver

today, in the process of checking out a family-run duo of ryokan (traditional japanese inns), i rode in a car for the first time since coming here three weeks ago. the innkeeper of the first inn asked if i wanted to see the one his sister ran and offered me a ride there. it was strange to consider getting into a car, as it seems infinitely more difficult to get around that way. it also felt odd tearing down these very narrow alleys with pedestrians and people on bikes looking up indifferently and slowly getting out of the way even though the guy had his foot emphatically on the pedal. people just know that no one in a car is going to mow them down on their walk to the train station. there's no road rage. people seem instead to internalize their frustration and anger and despair and throw themselves in front of trains during rush hour. other than that, i love the train culture. i have not experienced any of the bad stuff: drunken salarymen harassing women and falling off the seats, nor the groping, nor getting shoehorned into a train car by the officials hired to pack people in like so much heel into boot.

so as he drove me, this english-speaking innkeeper told me the story behind his inn. how it had been in business for over 50 years in its current incarnation, and how before that it and his sister's inn had both belonged to their grandfather. both inns still bear the grandfather's name, who had run them as milk shops making daily dairy deliveries (quick, five times fast). the road we were driving – more like an alley, barely wide enough to accommodate one car and the parked vehicles crammed up against walls and gutters – used to be a small river that somehow got paved over. between his english and my japanese i couldn't suss out just when that had happened or why. did it dry up? get diverted? get filled?

and of course in my mind i marveled at how different this scene would be in, oh, saigon, for example. the river wouldn't yet be a street, but instead would be a black canal, filled with trash and raw sewage, and stinky enough to make your eyes water as you drove by. the driver, grumbling to himself, would be dodging the masses of motorbikes at a whopping 10 miles per hour while honking almost as often as he blinked. this driver would probably manage to run at least one motorbike into someone else.

so naturally, this japan story leads to an excerpt from a vietnam story i wrote a year or two ago, about my very first arrival in that country (names and identifying details fictionalized for everyone's protection):

I flew into this airport when I came to Vietnam for the first time. My seatmate on the plane, an overseas Vietnamese guy who ran a restaurant in LA, struck up a conversation with me in his obvious excitement to be back in Ho Chi Minh City for the summer. I shared a cab with this guy – Ken Nguyen – who'd negotiated a price with a driver in front of the airport terminal. The driver left the airport parking lot honking freely while my new acquaintance, taking no notice, asked how long I'd be staying in Saigon. On the road going away from the airport where a small park runs along the left, our cab seemed to speed swervingly close to the river of motorbikes flowing around us. Out of the corner of my eye I watched motorbikes fly towards us as we passed a corner of merging traffic. I must have flinched several times, sure we were going to see someone bounce off the doors, because my cab companion told me, 'Don't worry.'

'Ohmygod,' I blurted, as the driver dodged a family of four on a motorbike, who all glared as we passed.

'It's okay. They drive like this every day,' said Ken.

Then we hit someone.

'Oh,' he said mildly. The driver, angered, shouted and gestured at the guy we'd bumped from behind, who now fixed us with a reproachful, slightly wild look. It seemed that some part had fallen off his bike when we'd bumped him off to the side. Our driver never stopped, just slowed long enough to survey the damage – minimal, apparently – more out of curiosity than concern. Then, peering momentarily in the rearview mirror, continued down the road.

'Oh my god,' I repeated stupidly, turning to look out the rear window. The guy was backing up to pick up the broken part. 'We're just going to drive away?'

'He's okay,' said Ken. 'No problem.'

Thus went my introduction to Ho Chi Minh City traffic and a phrase I would hear continually: No problem.

at the end of my visit today, the innkeeper politely drove me back to the ueno train station, and no pedestrians were injured in the telling of this story.