Japanese Dental Clinic

It’s not that hot.  It’s probably seventy-five degrees.  Maybe a bit more.  There’s a cool breeze blowing that helps.  But stuck in a suit, a warm day becomes a hot day and a hot day becomes a something sweltering.  Only in Japan is it still necessary to put a suit on for meetings.  Korea, maybe.  Depends who were’ seeing.  I’d probably do it for Samsung and LG, just to be polite.  But here in Tokyo, it’s still the default for most engagements, and I for one, can’t wait to loose the coat, ditch the slacks and throw this sweaty, white shirt back in my suit case. 

I’m being driven across Tokyo in a cab.  I might have taken the Yamanote line train but it would have required a ten-minute walk over to the Shimbashi station, the same walk that had sweated me up on the way over to the meeting I just finished.   Standing there, staring at the stairs to the cross walk over the road I flagged the next cab I saw.

I just moved up and over Roppongi, and now we’re speeding down passed the Azabu Juban subway station.  The driver has on some string music that sounds like a caricature of the music one would expect to hear in the waiting room of a Japanese dental clinic.  It’s so relaxing I’m anxious.  The tune must be Greensleeves but it is being played so slowly that it’s difficult to discern.  One imagines the conductor insisting on “more schmaltz, more schmaltz!”

The driver’s a nice gent.  Perhaps this music is an important part of his daily routine.   His hair is cut stubble short.  He’s got a white long sleeved shirt on just like mine.  Perhaps he’s sweaty, as well.  We concurred in English that it was hot out.  I explained that I couldn’t really speak Japanese beyond the polite exchange that made him think I might.  For some reason I thought it important to tell him that I could speak Chinese.  I was awarded with a thumbs up, in acknowledgement.