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  5 - My first French in Paris

  June 22nd, 2016, at long last, I was in Paris for the first time in my life at the age of 70 plus 9 months. I was so excited. This sort of excitement is something I could never experience if I kept on living just in my home country. I felt myself back in youth again.

  The airport bus, le bus direct, took me for 17 euros from Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle Aeroport to Etoile/Champs-Elysee, where I wanted to take le metro to save money and to satisfy my curiosity as well. The word, metro, itself, sounds alluring probably because of some scenes I've seen in movies or elsewhere. With my heavy suitcase and backpack, I struggled down stone steps to buy my train ticket, but I had trouble getting one. I didn't have any coin with me and my credit card that got me the bus ticket at the airport didn't work here. I. e., the machine kept asking for a 4 digit code number while at the airport 3 was all right. After trying several times I gave up and labored my way back up the steps. A sharp pain shot me in the right shoulder. - Old man as I am, but I'm samurai Japanese, muttering so to myself, I spurred myself. 

  It was early in the evening, and was still very light outside. Somehow I felt happy simply for it.  

  The taxi stand was easy to find, but a middle-aged taxi driver who first waved at me saying something in French turned me down when I tried to get in his cab. I felt at a loss what to do first, but then thought that I must get upset and express my feelings frankly as long as I'm in a foreign land. Silence is not necessarily gold in foreign lands as we've been told.

  "Why is it, you were about to take me, and then reject me?"

  In a situation like this in Japan, I wouldn't protest or complain and leave it with just "Ah so." to avoid offense. We're as good-natured as other peoples of the world but when it comes to complaining and engaging in ensuing argument, we're not used to nor trained for it and the situation could easily turn into a tense one.

  The French driver, dark and as short as me, looked slightly taken aback, and then said in a sincere apologetic manner something in English that he'd just received a call from the centre somewhere in Paris and that he had to follow the order. He further said that the cab behind him was his friend's and the guy would take me for him. With that, he drove off.

  Belatedly realizing what he'd said at first in French was the very apology, I wanted to say sorry to him but was of course too late and I looked at his friend's car with an African looking man behind the wheel. The moment I motioned toward him, however, a young French man in a suit and tie appeared from nowhere and climbed in the cab and they sped away.